


Cullen's Roadhouse

by TGBMcCray



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alice is a model., Angst, Art, Cheating, Drug Use, Eating Disorders, Edward's a turtle., F/M, Foul Language, Jasper the med student, Like Girls if they all worked and didn't take money from their parents, No really slow, Sarcasm, Slow Burn, Smart mouth, artist, bar speak, drug usage, screwed up 20-somethings, sloowww burn, southern bella
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:20:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 43,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22700035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TGBMcCray/pseuds/TGBMcCray
Summary: Southern girl and art grad Bella Swan is starting over in a new city with a brand new job at a bar in Chicago. While old flames and complicated relationships threaten to overwhelm her, she goes in deep with the owner's son, Edward Cullen. The only problem? He has a live-in girlfriend already.
Relationships: Alice Cullen/Jasper Hale, Carlisle Cullen/Esme Cullen, Edward Cullen/Bella Swan, Emmett Cullen/Rosalie Hale
Comments: 297
Kudos: 101





	1. Diet Coke and Ice

**Author's Note:**

> This story is COMPLETE and will post one chapter per week on Thursdays. (more on that in end note - please read it!) It is over 100K words, so we will be at this for a while together.

Keeping up with this woman makes me feel like a massive joke. She’s  got ten years and sixty pounds on me, but I am drenched in sweat as we move behind the bar, grabbing tickets and filling frosty glasses. How the fuck does she make pouring just the right amount of head on these beers look so effortless? She’s not even sweating. I’d hate her, but I am taking her job, and she’s off to have a real life as a bank teller and be home when her kids are off the bus or some shit. Plus, she’s trying really hard to be patient with me. I can see it clearly because I am five inches taller than her, and all day, all damned day, she has been looking up at me like I am a sad little thing to be pitied but so  far she hasn’t given up.

“Hey, Lauren!” Jesus. That construction worker with the crew cut, what’s his name? Taylor? Ty son? Tyler? He’s yelling at her but I’m supposed to be covering him, and I bet I’ve fucked something up again. My hands are freezing, and they are the only part of me that is, as I stick my hands back into the coolers again and come out with the wrong fucking bottle of beer. No, no, no. Bandana Guy drinks Coors Light. And this is? What the fuck is this? Rolling Rock? No. I take two big steps, and yank open another section of the cooler, managing to break my nail on the aluminum sliding top, but I catch myself before I curse out loud because there’s an old guy with a shot of Wild Turkey in front of me, and he is already looking way too fucking amused with me.

“Lauren!” I watch her shift over to him as she fills another giant pitcher with beer from the taps behind us, but she makes him wait till she’s handed it off to a server and stabbed another white ticket from that never-ending ticker tape of orders that keep generating at the end of the bar. “Pour me a beer,” Tyler says, real loud, so that everybody sitting along the glossy black bar and all  up section B 1-13 looks up. “New Girl doesn’t know shit about head. Look at all this foam. What’s she trying to do? Choke me?” 

My cheeks are burning as the entire section , which is mostly filled with construction workers on lunch break and annoying students,  bursts into good-natured guffaws. Squeezing my eyes shut, I stick my head nearly inside the horizontal cooler, pretending to be searching for just the right long neck of Coors Light from the rows of shiny silver tops winking at me. Breathe. Oh, you fucker. I wish you would choke on the foam. I hate this. I want to do a good job, and I don’t want Lauren to tell the  Cullen s I can’t cut it here. I need this job. Four fucking years of college, and I’ve got bills to pay, and I don’t know anybody here, and I need this job, I do. I just need some time, damn it. I’ve never done this before. Waited tables or served people, or got my  tennis shoes all black on holey rubber walking mats. Lauren keeps telling me I’ll be glad these things are here by the end of my shift, but I don’t believe her. I feel like a gladiator, trying to stay on top that stupid rubber pedestal. 

When I come up for air, Wild Turkey smiles at me. “Can I get another?” he says quietly from behind big, dark sunglasses and a shaggy dog beard. 

“Oh! Yeah, okay. Sure.”

I ring it up, and actually manage to find the right buttons on this register, but when I turn to the daunting array of plugged liquor bottles behind me, I’m  lost. 

“Third one from the left, about middle ways up the back,” he says, and oh, relief. I like this guy. I manage to pour it without spilling, and he swallows it in one gulp without looking like a greedy, creepy old bastard somehow. He slaps a five on the bar, smiles at me, and bobs his head in that way that old men have that could mean hello, goodbye, or fuck off. “Keep the change.” He’s out the door.

I grab the cash and make change, throwing the tips in a big clear pickle jar behind me, because since Lauren is training me, they aren’t mine to keep. She’ll give me a cut at the end of this shift, which is kind of crap because even though I’m not very good, I am running my ass off, and I wish I could keep what  little I am getting from the ones that feel sorry for me.

It goes on like this for a while, till Tyler is yelling again, and I can’t avoid him anymore because Lauren is in the back changing a keg, and she doesn’t think I’m ready to learn that yet. 

“New girl!” I take the bar towel from the back pocket of my jean shorts and put it between us, wiping up his water rings, and trying to deflect. “Where you from, New Girl?”

“G-Georgia.”

This little foot of the bar is going to shine.

Tyler smirks. He won’t stop smirking. I hate  smirkers . James is a  smirker . 

“You work tomorrow, bumpkin?”

“I…yeah. I work tomorrow.”

“All right. Tomorrow you pour me a decent beer.” He lays the money for his meal on the table, and I scoop it up, managing to drop one of the quarters in the ice well as I do. He laughs, and he just won’t stop laughing, and what an asshole anyway. He’s what, five years older than me? Eight? Not enough to act this high and mighty. I’m working here, damn it. I’m not the one sucking down  pissbeer on my lunch break. Fucking awesome success story, he is. 

Lauren comes back from the keg room and blows out a breath at smartass with the wide smile and three-day scruff. “Pack it in, Tyler. You’re gonna fall off your beams if you drink as much as you want.” 

He smirks again. “Maybe I need me something to break my fall.” His big dark eyes creep over me. “When you lose this job, come find me.”

Lauren snaps her towel at him. “Get.”

She steps back toward this end’s register and smooths out a wad of cash from her pocket. She faces the money quickly, puts some in the register, drops some in another pickle jar, and sweeps her hands toward the wreckage of lunch hour. Bottles, plates, pitchers, glasses, and squeezed up and soppy rinds of lemons and limes litter the great expanse of black polished wood. 

She sighs, and her chin quivers. “Listen, we’ll get this in a minute. I’m gonna give you a tip way more important than anything to do with Tyler, okay?”

I twist my white towel with the blue stripes in my hands and try not to think about how sticky my thighs are with God-even-knows-what and how sweaty I am. 

“The  Cullens drink Diet Coke.”

I look up in amazement, but no, she’s not jerking my chain. “What?”

“Just what I said. All of them drink Diet Coke. Never regular. Never anything else. Always Diet. One of them comes up here, you pour them a Diet, and you stick one of these little black straws in it.” She gestures to a plastic cup of stir sticks. “Every Diet gets a black straw, and every Cullen gets a Diet. Don’t mess that up, and you’re golden.”

“Oh…kay. How, how many of them are there?”   


She arches a brow at me. “A lot. All boys. Except  Esme , but you’ll meet her later. And they all drink Diet. You got it?”

“Yes. Diet Coke. Black straw.”

She looks up into my face like trying to make sure I comprehend this simple bit of wisdom that belongs inside a fortune cookie. When she seems satisfied that I do, she takes my arm and leads me around the bar where she presses a  five-gallon bucket into my hand. 

“First, we get ice. Then we’ll get the mess.” She hoists a bucket just like mine, and I follow her around a super tight hallway, past the locked door of the office, to a mammoth ice maker that sounds like Darth Vader just before Luke takes off his helmet in Return of the Jedi. 

She spends a couple minutes showing me how to hold this giant metal shovel-scoop thing and how to dig way down into the ice  compartment at the back to bust up the ice that gets stuck and make room for fresh to fall and then she stands back to watch me. I suck at this, too. I’m getting maybe a quarter of the ice she is with each scoop, and a lot of it is ending up on the floor. 

About the time I get so frustrated that an exasperated “Fuck!” slips past my lips, I catch a glimpse of something decidedly male through the  straggles  of  matted, stinky  hair escaping my long braid. I look up from the ice, and he breezes right along the hallway. 

He’s wearing a black Cullen’s Roadhouse t-shirt, a pair of Levi’s, and a fucking apron. Really. He’s got a white apron looped low around his hips, just folded and tied around his waist like a dirty towel. His hair, a riot of gold and red and brown, but mostly red, flops into his eyes, which are – maybe brown? Green? I’m not sure, he’s flashing me a smile, and he’s gone. I watch him take the two steps down into the kitchen, his ass perfectly framed by the apron at his hips. His long fingers are curled around a  Styrofoam cup in one hand, and a clipboard in the other. 

If my thighs weren’t already soaked with beer and ice, I might have a problem right now. He had dimples. At least one anyway, and a smile that just lit me up and blew me out in front of God and country and Lauren. 

I become aware that I’m clutching her arm when she says, “ Ow . Bella?”

“Who was that?” 

She rubs her arm and glances back toward the kitchen, into the din of noise where Adonis just descended. “Who, Edward? He works here, manages back of house.”

“Edward. Oh! Edward Cullen?”

“Yeah. Remember what I said –“

My mouth is dry but  my  pussy is really, really wet. I don’t care how gross it sounds. It’s true. I think I may be working on a contact orgasm, but without the contact.  I rasp at her, testing out if my voice still works.  “Diet Coke.”

“Yep.”

The shovel/ice spade in my hand is so cold, but it feels good because it’s so much hotter in here than it was before, and God knows it was hot then.

“Does he have a girlfriend?” I don’t care how forward I am. I want to know.

Lauren’s nose  snurls . It’s universal chick body language for  _ this shit is complicated _ . “Yeah. They just moved in together a few months back, I think.  We  don’t see her much in here. But they’re still together.”

“Not for long.”

I don’t realize I’ve said it out loud till Lauren starts laughing but I am serious as a fucking heart attack. I know, I know I said I was through. I swore off men. I moved here, even though it was James’s fucking hometown, and I swore him and Jacob and all of them off, but fuck. 

Edward Cullen looks sexy as sin in an apron. 

I have to have him. 

*** 

He’s the owner’s son, or one of them. I don’t know what the rest of them look like, but if Edward is any indication, this job may not suck as much as I was thinking it might. 

Emmett’s the oldest, and Jasper’s the youngest. Lauren tells me this as she counts down her drawer at the end of our shift on day one. Edward is the middle son, the easy-going one. I want him in my middle. Easy going, hard going, just going and yeah, coming. I can’t explain it. I haven’t felt that kind of instant attraction since…ever, really. No, not even James. James is a cad, a flirter, a schemer. Edward just smiled and I want to climb him like the last tree in the middle of a stampede.

Fortunately, I have bigger fish to fry. Lauren takes me back to the office and introduces me to Leah Clearwater, a wisp of a woman with bones where her wrists should be and a paleness that makes her naturally dark skin look like rancid chocolate milk. Lauren says she’s in a bad marriage, something about a junkie husband. I guess it’s the stress but she looks like she’s bought out too many CVS allergy sections herself. Day manager, front of house, she is the yin to Edward’s yang. I kind of want to hate her, just because she talks about him to the other servers like she’s known him forever, which she probably has. She keeps a little radio on her hip, and she  unbelts it when it crackles as she counts down the drawer full of cash Lauren just spent fifteen minutes putting in order. “Tell Edward to order more ketchup. Nobody likes that house brand from Sysco.”

Somebody on the radio crackles back but it’s not him, so whatever.

Leah finishes the drawer and gives me a small smile as she presses a wad of cash into Lauren’s hand. “You gonna make it?” 

Why does everybody keep asking me that? I’m not totally breakable. And I wasn’t  _ that _ bad. “Sure,” I say, trying to look convincing. “No problem.” 

“A few more days with Lauren and then you’ll expo with me through lunch so you learn the mneu.”

“Expo?” Bars have their own language, like video game geeks and Star Trek nerds. Who knew?

“Expedite. I make sure the orders are plated right during lunch, set up the sauces and sides, and get the trays ready for the servers. It’s the best way to learn the menu quickly so you aren’t so slow on bar when people want to eat. Back of house.” 

“The menu,” I repeat. “Back of house?”

Lauren hands me a measly ten-dollar bill for a five-hour shift. On top of the two dollars and seven cents I’m making an hour, that will just about not-at-all pay for the gas it took me to drive all over town for interviews and finally get this job. 

“The kitchen,” Lauren says, smirking. Did I mention I hate smirkers. 

But the kitchen?

Bingo.

*** 

Leah sidles up to the bar the next morning as Lauren is showing me how to clean out and ice down the wells. She takes the gun away from me, holds down the button for Coke and Sprite at the same time, and flashes me a grin that pulls the already prominent bones in her face even tighter. 

“QT starts at 10:45. Booth 1.” 

Fucking shorthand, bar-speak. 

And what the fuck with Coke and Sprite together? Gross. 

“That’s homemade ginger ale for her stomach. Nerves.” I gape at her. Lauren leans over to whisper conspiratorially while Leah moves up to the front of the bar and starts rolling up the giant blinds over the windows and turning on neon signs. “Her husband. She’s very nervous. Smokes too.” 

Lauren is like the little chubby Scheherazade of Cullen’s. She sees all, knows all, does it all better than anybody else, and yet, can’t wait to get away from it all.

“Okay,” I say, pulling a beer pitcher of sliced limes out of the fruit cooler under the taps and arranging it at the wells with yet more little rubber mats. “QT?”

“Quality Time. It’s what  Esme calls our morning planning meetings.”

Morning staff meetings as quality time?  Esme Cullen sounds like a cunt. 

My well is decently set up and servers are drifting toward booth 1 for this mysterious meeting when the ticker tape from hell goes off. 

Diet Coke. 

That’s all. Hmm. 

I make the cup, and have just stuck the little black straw in when he materializes behind me. No apron. Darker jeans. His hair looks like he just crawled out of bed from fucking someone six ways to Sunday. He was probably fucking his girlfriend.

Damn it.

He grins at me, a little lopsided, and takes the straw out of the cup. It goes into his mouth. He talks around it as he pours the clear plastic cup into a replica of that giant  Styrofoam one from yesterday. 

“Sorry,” he says, and ooh,  his voice is as good as his height, and the height is really, really good, because I’m easily 5’8,” so he’s got to be 6’2” or 6’3”. “I have to have a lid for back of house.”

Don’t say something stupid, Bella.

“Oh, right. Because of contamination and stuff?” Oh, God. He’s not tainted. Shut up! “I would’ve poured it for you but we don’t have any of those cups around here.”

He’s working that straw with lips, his tongue, and arching one eyebrow up at me. I never could do that. It’s so James Bond, effortlessly cool. I think my eyebrows are paralyzed maybe, along with other parts of my anatomy at the moment. 

“Here.” Warm fingers touch my wrist. “I’ll show you the secret.”

Oh, please. Please, do.

Those hot fingers go around my forearm and he tows me away from the bar and down the hall toward the office. We stop at the ice machine and he drops my arm. I can’t register anything besides the lack of contact and that straw in his mouth. I bet he’s one of those guys who can tie cherry stems into knots, too. Oh, God. Isn’t there some kind of law against being this turned on before lunchtime?

He taps the top of the ice machine and I drag my eyes away from his mouth long enough to notice a plastic-covered sleeve of the giant Big Gulp-style cups and matching lids. 

“There you go. Now you know where the treasure is, you can’t go running off.” 

“I would never.” I try for coy, smile up at him, but I really just want to grab him and push him out the door behind us that leads to the dumpsters and the oil recycling. Alleyway sex. All the hottest man-stealing, home-wrecking whores are doing it these days. 

“Well, that’s settled. We better get you back to Leah and Lauren.”

I start to follow him, but the hand with the Diet Coke sweeps out for me to go first, and so I do, walking slowly, trying not to twist my ass so much I look ridiculous, while remembering to keep my shoulders back and sway a little more than usual. 

My back feels hot. I can feel the prickles all along my neck. I wore the shortest jean shorts I could find today. The uniform is jeans and Cullen’s shirts. Or jean shorts. Daisy Duke, you blessed redneck, thank you for showing me the light. Let’s hope he sees it, too.

He hangs back behind Booth 1 while Leah yammers on. I have no idea what she says. He’s looking at his clipboard again. I don’t think he’s listening either, but I don’t know. 

“We’ve got to make a liquor order tomorrow,” Leah says. She shoots me a look. “That’s you and Lauren. Day bartender checks out all the old bottles so I can order.”

That explains the dozens of empties lined up at the other end of the bar. Sort of. I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do with any of them, but I nod like I do, and then immediately look back to Edward to see what he’s doing. 

He’s watching me. As soon as my eyes land on him, he’s back at his clipboard, and oh, he’s caught. It could just be everybody stares at the new girl when the day manager calls her out, but I prefer to think it’s the shorts. He’s bewitched by the denim and skin. Come here, and let me charm your snake for you, Edward. 

He’s smiling at whatever is on that clipboard, and it’s such a nice smile. One dimple and very straight, white teeth, except for a top incisor that's a little out of line. I can’t tell about the lowers. He didn’t smile that big. He looks trustworthy, which is ridiculous, because he is a man, after all. The only trustworthy ones are dead. Or gay. 

My phone beeps as QT breaks up and I miss him walking away as I read the text from Alice. 

“I’m in town. Your landlo rd stopped by. 

He wanted to remind you that there are NO pets. 

Put Bails cat carrier under a quilt in the bathroom.

He was not amused.”

I have got to make some fucking money. I need to pay a pet deposit. 

And buy new underwear. 


	2. Geronimo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the formatting is driving me nuts. Random extra spaces, etc, come from AO3 not wanting to play with Microsoft Word. I'm trying to fix them.

Tyler likes the shorts.

This is an unfortunate side effect for which I was not prepared when I picked them out for Edward. He's ordered a round of pissbeer for him and Red Bandana, Blue Bandana. He's scrutinizing my thighs as I lean up to the taps to pour it.

Lauren says you don't pour level unless you're in a big hurry and have to just start pitchers and let the taps run while you make drinks. With individual glasses, you tip the glass to the side at about a 30 degree angle as the beer pours. Voila. Smooth silky piss with a healthy but not too chunky foam.

"You got legs up to your ass, New Girl. I may have misjudged you."

"I wish I could say the same."

"Rawr. Listen to that, boys. She's feisty, today."

"She's feisty every day."

I drop the glass. All the pretty pissbeer seeps into the grates beneath the taps as I flip it off and turn around. My heart is jumping out of my chest. It's the Olympic pole vault in there and oh, the agony of defeat.

Jacob Black is standing at the end of the bar, cash in hand, looking massively other when compared to the middle-aged, very white, construction-worker lunch crowd today.

Tyler's grin is sharp enough to cut my limes. "You her boyfriend or something?"

Jacob says "Yes," at the same time I say, "No." He glares at me while Tyler and the peanut gallery watch with wolf eyes.

"Do you want a drink?"

"I don't know about this guy, but I do. Bumpkin’s got butterfingers." Tyler's so funny. Such a funny asshole. I turn away from Jacob and pour three perfect glasses that I place softly in front of each guy while desperately plotting my next move.

"Do you want a drink or not? I'm working."

"I would like a moment of your time."

"I'm not on break."

"When are you gonna come back and party with us? We miss you, Bells. I miss you."

Tyler hoots but a dirty look from Jacob, probably about the same 250-pound weight, but wired with thick muscles instead of beer cushioning, quiets him down.

Jacob’s short for a dude. I’m almost looking him in the eye right now, across the bar, rocking back on the heels of my Asics. When I’m wearing three or four inch heels, which is every second that I’m not in here or on a run, I’m a little taller than him. I can’t get serious with a short guy. He knows. This was fun for a while, to piss James off, to wipe James off of me when the time came, to help me forget the torment, but he’s short. Come on. I don’t have great standards, I’ll admit, but this is non-negotiable. 

White eyes and white teeth and dark, dark skin. I mean even for an Indian, he’s dark. And it’s summer, so he just bronzes. I can still hear James in my head, sneering at me while he bent me over his bathroom sink. “Did you fuck your little Indian? Did you pretend he was a black guy? You like those ones your mama doesn’t like, don’t you?” 

I was gasping. He was going hard, almost too hard. It hurt. “Was he big like a buck? Did he fuck you this good?”

I couldn’t speak because his fingers were in my mouth, and then he was coming, rattling me so hard I’d have flat line bruises against my thighs the next day where the porcelain cut into me. 

Jacob was really good with picking up the pieces of what little I ever had to offer anybody. That, and he always had something to help me relax. He smells like clove, and a little bit of whiskey, because I think he starts his days with in it on his French toast. 

“Come on.” He’s used to talking at the brick wall that is me. “Friday night? Come by. Just for a while.”

I blink at him. Tyler’s watching me with the biggest shit-eating grin. I mean, I bet they don’t get this much entertainment in a ten-hour shift building whatever monstrosity is down the street. 

“If I don’t have to work,” I say, and I don’t choke on the words because I need to relax and Jacob is Linus’s blanket. “Sure.”

“Order up, Bella.”

My head snaps around like the crack on James’s clay pigeon thrower. I imagine myself shattering like the clay discs, and falling, falling down into the field, lost to the world. 

I almost trip getting over to the side of the bar to take the giant hot ham and cheese platter with the obnoxious pile of artery-clogging fries from Edward’s hands.

“Thanks, Edward. You didn’t have to bring this up!”

There’s that dimple. His eyes are green, like deeper and sweeter than a Green Dragon at the end of a long night of drinking, green. Fuck me running, how much did he hear?

“I didn’t see any runners, and it was getting cold. It’s no trouble.”

There’s plenty of trouble up here already. I can lead you to more. 

“Well, thanks. I really appreciate it. You want a Coke?”

“Sure.” He watches me while I get the gun and take the lid off his cup. “Better today?” He looks down the bar toward Jacob, and farther on, Lauren, checking out bottles from last night. I ignore Jacob’s stare.

“Yeah, it’s not so bad. I figured out how to pour the beer.”

“She gives good head, man.” Tyler raises his glass at Edward. Mother fuck. I can’t even imagine how red I am right now. Corvette red. 

Oddly, Edward colors a bit, and it suits him so well, that flush, like how he looks when he’s probably a little exerted, working at it, you know? “Watch your mouth, Tyler.” He’s gruff. Tyler’s just smirking, hands up, like don’t look at me. He looks like Donald Trump with that dumb shit smile. 

“Hey, thanks again.”

His head tilts. “Any time.” One hand reaches up toward my head, and I think he’s going to tweak my braid, but he grabs a napkin from the stack by the server station, and walks away, sucking down the Diet Coke.

I turn and drop the plate in front of Tyler. “You are…unbelievable.”

“Not me.” He’s already chomping a fry and using another to gesture toward me for the benefit of Red and Blue Bandanas. “You’re twitter-pated.” 

“What?” I look but Jacob is gone. I saunter down to pick up the napkin I dropped there and fist the bill he left behind. It’s a hundred, which is just… so Jacob, but I don’t care. I need it. I stick in my pocket quick before Lauren notices. “Jacob’s just a friend.”

A server appears with the rest of the food for Tyler’s friends and I hand it out and run for refills, getting them settled. 

Tyler watches me, all smiles as I rush around, kind of flustered still from the Edward-afterglow.

He swallows a hulking bite of his sandwich, mopping at the oozing cheese on his chin with his fingers. 

“Not Geronimo, New Girl. Cullen.” 

***

Alice is going to lap me if I don’t get it together. She’s practically treading water beside me, waiting for me to kick it back in gear. Nobody on this street looks like they run. This is part of the issue with living in Chicago. Physical fitness isn’t high on the list of this particular lower income community’s priorities.

Ghetto. It’s a ghetto. Black, white, brown. We’re all broke as fuck. 

“What’s the problem?” Alice, the model, the giraffe, or the gazelle, skinny little bitch who towers over even me. She’s two inches taller and twice as intense. My rock of Gibraltar and friend numero uno. She’ll be back on a plane in a few days. Her next job is back in Atlanta. It’s too far. I need her help.

“Tyler calls me bumpkin. I should’ve never told him I was from Georgia. It’s not like I’ve never lived in a city before.” 

“So why did you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want too much of myself here. I just want to work and disappear, you know?”

She huffs, and stops a second to adjust the string on her purple and blue Asics. We are serious runners. Distance over time. It helps Alice decompress between shoots and keep her figure in that nearly anorexic state that is required for her job but so unusual for a girl that loves to eat like she does. It helps me. It helps me, I don’t know, exist.

She tightens her long ponytail while I jog in place. “Then you shouldn’t have moved to James’s hometown. And Jacob’s. I mean, what the fuck, Bella?”

“I told you, I was supposed to have work here.”

She wipes the sweat off her throat with the bottom of her expensive tee shirt. “Yeah, well. Couldn’t they let you out of your lease? I mean, they can’t have the most honest renters around here. Probably happens all the time.”

I don’t know how to explain it. I needed James nearby, so if I ever wavered, it would be easy to check up and see the evidence of why I moved on. 

A ghetto cruiser slows down beside us, and Alice flips it off with a perfectly manicured finger and begins to run again in earnest. We fall into a side-by-side pattern, with one of us easing ahead or behind when the sidewalk narrows with a fire hydrant or trash or broken concrete. The sky is steel gray, as ironclad as the walls we build around ourselves. 

Run, just run. Stop thinking about James and Jacob…and God forbid, Edward.

I wonder what his girlfriend is like? I want to know how old he is. He’s the middle brother, and I just have no frame of reference, other than that Jasper stopped by before I left today, and mentioned classes at Loyola. Psych 338. That’s upper level, so he’s what? Twenty-one or twenty-two? Almost our age. Edward could be twenty-eight or thirty-four. It’s so hard to tell with men, and he seems so grounded, so far beyond me. Living with a girl?

That implies grown-upedness, commitment. Or it should. It doesn’t have to, I know. I mean there’s James. He tried to move me in and it was all just bullshit, a front, so who knows?

I don’t want to fuck anything up for Edward. He’s good. I don’t know how I know this, but I can tell, he really is, and I am just a user, a loser, a loss. I don’t want to suck him into my well. He probably thinks I’m a kid anyway. 

What kind of woman snags a man like Edward Cullen? What kind of woman gets to crawl into his bed every night and lick those lips and wash away all his worries from a long day at work? I don’t want to know. 

I don’t. 

***

We eat Mexican for dinner and have margaritas and Alice moans about the white cheese sauce and how mad Enrique is going to be if he has to rip the stitches out of the panels on this one dress she’s fitted for already.

We stumble back to my two-bedroom, up the rickety wooden steps, straight up at the top of this old house that used to be beautiful before somebody spliced and diced it into low-level apartments. The windows are great though. Great big floor-to-ceiling in the living room that angle around the way Victorians should. I always wanted a bay window as a kid, to read in, but this is better. My Big Lots ottoman is cheetah print, and Bails looks like a panther on it. 

“Did you skin this kitty, Bails? You couldn’t stand the competition, could you?”

He kicks up the motor on his purr-machine, my little black Corvette kitty, friend numero dos. He’s not little anymore. He’s fat. I should leash him and make him run with us. That’s so funny I can’t stop laughing, and I want to tell Alice, but she’s missing.

I drag my drunk ass into the kitchen. I hear the shower running, but the bathroom door there that connects gives when I push on it. Alice is on her knees in leather leggings, puking.

It’s not the food. She’s had her fingers down her throat. Her makeup is smeary, black mascara tracks messing up her pretty face.

“We ran, baby. Please stop. Don’t do this to yourself. You said you wouldn’t do this anymore.” I get a washcloth and start cleaning her up, getting the tears that are silently leaking out of her show-stopping hazel eyes. She doesn’t speak. “You said you were well. Why did you lie?”

She blinks at me. 

“We’re all liars, aren’t we?”

I don’t speak, and we just sit there, both of us sniffling now. I told her all about Edward at dinner, and Alice, who knows all, she told me to stay away, to save what’s left of my heart. 

I sigh, picking at my nail polish from my perch on the edge of the big old tub. I don’t have a shower curtain. I can’t afford one anything but a cheap plastic one that would smell like chemicals anyway. “You’re beautiful. They’re not going to fire you if you weigh an extra pound.”

She’s mouth breathing. “I can’t stop.”

“Yes, you can. Damn it. Yes, you can!”

She reaches for the toilet paper, my last roll, and takes a wad to blow her nose. 

“Let’s go to Cullen’s tomorrow,” she says. “I want to see these Cullen boys.”

So we do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glad to see some of you back for the ride. Tell your friends! Feel free to talk to me. I'm here and also on twitter and FB under the same name. Happy to chat, answer questions as I can, etc.


	3. Roadhouse Fries

Leah’s out sick today, supposedly not from nervous drug abuse, so evening Eric is managing front of house on day shift. He’s an amiable balding man, the kind you feel sorry for because he’s probably only early 30s and there’s no way he’s had a full head of hair since high school.

His hair situation, the lack of it, it’s not stopping him from working Alice. I mean, he’s embarrassing. Jesus, I hope I’m not that embarrassing about Edward. Am I that embarrassing around Edward?

Alice wore booty shorts, those retro high-waist ones, with some kind of strappy little half top and platform wedges. She’s all Nantucket in the summertime and Kennedy cool. She looks a metric fuck-ton better than Taylor Swift ever did in it.

Anyway, Lauren has taught me to do the bottle check out thingy, so I’m hanging out with a three-ring binder and a bunch of sticky empty well bottles. Off brand rum, vodka, and whiskey. Whiskey is popular here. I’ve probably checked thirty of those out already.

Alice gives me the signal, a bird in the hand when she’s asking for a pop, and I point out a pretty neat local bookstore nearby and a pawn shop that might be of interest. She’s gone before Eric can start mentally figuring what hair plugs might cost him.

Jasper breezes through just before the lunch rush is due. He’s pulling at his hair, which is longish on top like Edward’s but lighter. He’s like the Diet version of the Real McCoy. 

“Rough morning?” I pour him a Diet Coke and stick in the straw. 

The straw goes between his teeth, just like Edward’s. He orders Roadhouse Fries, and produces several thick textbooks before he answers, all easy on his words. Maybe he’s not Cullen Light. Maybe he’s Cullen High, I don’t know. He takes laid back to clinical levels.

“Lotta work, but I got it,” he says. “Just gotta Ride. It. Out.”

Alice sweeps in the front door as he’s exhaling slow on “out.” The merciless Chicago wind has her black hair, which is flying around her bare shoulders as though it is constantly programmed for camera angles, which it probably is.

He turns and that smile, it spreads over his face, out from his lips, across both dimples, lifting his cheeks, his brows, his forehead, up and into the curls of his wild hair. He’s a river, and she’s the thrown stone. Brace for impact, Jasper. 

Heaven help us all. 

**

“You didn’t tell me his brother was hot.”

Alice is hissing at me while Jasper’s in the bathroom. 

“You didn’t ask, remember? You were too bent on ‘Stay away! Abandon hope all ye who enter Cullen’s Hell.”

I grab a bottle of Malibu Rum and try to flip a page in the binder but my sticky fingers snag and I rip it. Mother fuck.

“Seriously? What’s the oldest one look like? Are they like Thor and Loki? Who’s hotter than Loki? Captain America?”

We both shake our heads and giggle. We say it together, like kindergartners jinxing each other for a pop, “Iron Man!” We keep trying to straighten up, but it’s tough. She’s so right. Emmett’s probably RDJ, complete with gadgets of gorgeousness. 

Jasper returns, carrying the basket of food he ordered himself, and slides onto the stool in front of me, right next to Alice. Cozy. 

“You didn’t tell me you had beautiful friends, Bella,” he says, unrolling his silverware. He’s watching Alice instead of the fries, and my, my, there is some real hunger there.

“Yeah, well. Just one actually, and she’s like the wind. She blows in, and she blows out.” I am searching for tape now, ransacking the drawers by the register so I can fix the stupid book. 

“You travel, Alice? Work or pleasure?”

I try not to snort. He said ‘pleasure,’ and she’s gone. I can see it in the way she sits up straighter, pulling her shoulders back a little and the girls up.

Aha! Scotch tape, somewhat yellowed but usable. 

“I travel for work.” She’s sipping at her Diet Coke, trying to keep her hands still I bet. “I’m in the air more than on the ground, I do believe.”

Jasper blinks. “Ah do believe? Where are you guys from?”

“Atlanta.” We’re doing it again, talking together, like twins. George and Fred Weasley have got nothing on us. I mean, except that awesome ginger hair. One of these days I want to be a redhead, or at least sleep next to one. Jasper, go tell your brother I need a volunteer from the audience, please.

Jasper has his fork in those fries, which Tyler has already made clear to me are the pride and joy of Cullen’s. He removes his black straw from his mouth, and he’s tapping the edge of the red wire basket and leaning in to Alice’s bare shoulder. 

“Southern girls. Well, then, you must appreciate great food.” He cuts a generous portion of the heart attack in front of him and holds it up on our eye level. “Roadhouse fries, crinkle cut. Cheddar cheese sauce. Crispy bacon, and for the crowning glory–” he dunks the fork in a dressing container, “Cullen-made ranch.” He nudges Alice’s shoulder. “Try a bite.”

There’s no way. I guess everybody has a walker moment, when you either pull out a chair and get comfy with a possibility or you walk, and this is it for Alice and ol’ Jasper. There’s no way in billy hell she’ll eat any of that today. 

Of course, I’m right because she’s shaking her head, flipping her hair over her shoulder and using one hand like a shield to put distance between them. “Oh, oh, no. I really shouldn’t. But thank you kindly.”   


“Thank you kindly? I don’t know what I need to do to get you to say that again, but you still need to try these. I mean you have to. You don’t want to insult a Cullen, do you? These are the secret to the family’s success. They’re putting me through college.”

The ranch is dribbling off the fork into his cupped open palm beneath. It pools there as he lifts the fork toward her again. 

As it turns out, I know just jack shit when it comes to how anybody ought to react to a Cullen, because while I’m calculating how hard she’s going to come down on him, she’s done it. Alice leans forward and closes her deep red-stained lips over his fork and eats the whole damn bite.

He’s cleaning the ranch off his hand and watching her chew, slowly, like she’s never had fries before in her life, like she hasn’t eaten in two weeks and these are the finest chocolate truffles in Switzerland, just savoring all that cheese and grease and fat. He takes his thumb and swipes the corner of her lips, taking away a tiny smear of ranch and oh, hell, did he really just lick his finger? He did. That is just too hot to be gross. Okay, it’s still a little gross, but mostly hot.

“What is it you do for a living, Alice –?”

Poor Alice can’t speak. The finger trick and food porn have apparently rendered her senseless because she just sits there on her stool, blinking at him.

“Brandon,” I say. “She’s Alice Brandon, and she’s a model.”

That smile is back, and all 150 watts of it are trained on my worldly, sophisticated, twitter-pated bestie.

He cuts more fries and pushes the basket over to her. 

“Well, of course you are.”

**

Jasper, as it turns out, has a world of talents between his mouth and hands. He’s ordered food for Alice, which she is enjoying relatively guilt-free (a Southwestern salad with grilled chicken, chunks of avocado, salsa, and a small handful of crushed Cullen-fried tortilla chips), and now he’s talking away, proving a better informant than if I’d actually paid him for his trouble.

“I’m going to graduate early so I can get started on med school. I mean, Edward and Em have pretty well got the family businesses covered.”   


“Med school?” Alice whistles. “That’s ambitious.”

He polishes off the last of their fries, his knees knocking hers on the stools. I don’t know what happened to Alice’s bubble, her sphere of personal get-the-fuck-outta-my-space, but it’s gone, popped, penetrated. Heh. “Right. Paris, Milan, and New York.” He ticks the cities off on his fingers. “ You’re not ambitious at all, are you?”

“I get paid to smile and walk. Okay, glare and walk. ”

“And I bet you do it so well.”

I clear my throat. “What does Emmett do? I’ve never seen him here.”

Jasper tears his eyes away from Alice and the salad of sin. “Oh, he manages our Michigan Avenue location. Cullen’s Café? It’s fancier, but you know, we keep the Roadhouse Fries.” 

“Oh.”

“Yeah, Edward’s up there on Tuesday and Friday. And Jessica really likes it up that way.”

Jessica? Jessica. Ugh, how unbelievably mundane. She already sounds like trailer trash. Does Chicago have trailers or just tenements? I don’t know. Don’t care. I don’t like her.

Alice pauses, a healthy chunk of avocado nearly to her red lips, and fixes Jasper in her sights. “Oh? What does Jessica do there?”   


Jasper’s smile drops away from his face for the first time since Alice walked through the door. He steals a piece of chicken from her salad and chews slowly. I recognize a distraction when I see one, and think about speaking, but apparently Alice has recovered and is back to doing what she does best – being a pro.

“Does she work for the Cullen’s, too? That must be really nice, being so close to her boyfriend every day.” She’s licking a bit of that chili lime dressing/nectar off one nail and leaning closer to Jasper. It’s his turn to blink. Chicken chewed, he cannot escape the tractor beam of her eyes.

“Oh, no,” he ducks his head but his attention is back on her almost immediately. “She doesn’t work. She used to be a clerk or something, but not now. She just really likes that area so she hangs out when Edward is up there.”

She doesn’t work. Like, at all? 

“Oh, that must be nice,” Alice says, all sweet and sugar and not a bit judgmental, although I know that in her mind, she’s screaming, ‘Wtf? He’s not old enough to be a sugar daddy,’ just like I am. “I like my work, but it can get tiring, living out of a suitcase.”

“I think life tires Jessica,” Jasper says, and then realizing maybe that’s he’s calling out his brother’s girlfriend to near strangers, he straightens and turns the conversation like a master sailor cutting away from a storm. “But that’s why we all need vacations. I should take one, sometime. Have any recommendations? Where’s your favorite place you’ve ever been?”   


She doesn’t think about it. “Nawlins.”

“Say again?”

“New Orleans,” I say, stressing the second half of the last word out, like Ore-leans. I drop six more bottles of vodka into the giant trashcan next to me, and shelve the liquor checkout binder. “You may need an interpreter sometimes. We speak Southern American.”

“You know who loves a southern accent?” Jasper hands off his Diet Coke for a refill. 

“Who?” I stick in another black straw even though he already has one. It’s looking ragged, that straw.

“Edward.” He pulls out the old straw and starts defiling the new one with lips that favor his brother’s, full on bottom, thinner on top, well-defined arch. “Yeah, he’s a sucker for ‘em. Has been since he discovered Daisy Duke as a kid.”

I just smile, and he chews his straw, kind of appraising me. 

“Well, I declare," I say, laying it on a little thick. "He'll get a mighty big kick out of us.” Me. He can get a kick out of me, or a push into me, whichever. Whatever.

“Yeah,” Jasper says, swiveling his stool around between Alice and me. “Yeah, maybe he will.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is a little late in the day to post. It's also a little shorter than the last two chapters, but I if I had included the next scene, this would've been a monster 5K words, and my pacing would be off. Anyway, happy Thursday! Drop me a line if you feel so inclined. I happen to be a feedback hoor.


	4. Chicken Boob

Leah Clearwater needs to eat. It could be so many years of living in the shadow of Alice, the vomiting vixen, but I can spot an eating disorder faster than a fat kid can spot a Twinkie. I mean that kindly, as I love both fat kids and Twinkies. My grandma was a fat type two diabetic till the day she died, and I will never forgive Hostess for not getting its shit together in time for her to live to see the revival of her beloved yellow sponge. I mean, really. Those Sara Lee heaven cakes, or whatever, were just not the same. Every time I snuck one to her in the nursing  home she’d glare up at me, like, I know what you’re doing, kid, and I am not that stupid.

Leah doesn’t eat much of anything. I mean, sure, she orders lunches and picks at them. She enjoys the hell out of those little packages of oyster crackers Edward keeps by the soup vats in the kitchen. She eats those the way drunks eat peanuts, but that’s it. Actual sustenance evades her, and I wonder that no one has seen it. Even Lauren, with her all-knowing eye, blames it on nerves over the addict husband. My theory? The addict husband is an abusive piece of shit, and this is what she controls since he’s untamable – food – or, the lack of it.

She gets me from the bar just before lunch rush hits, and Tyler isn’t happy about it. 

“But I need her. She’s just learning how to pour a good beer. I was thinking about having her make me a gimlet today. See if bumpkin has ever heard of one.” He’s eating a calzone today, heavy on the sausage and peppers. This guy, he’s sliding toward diabetes himself, or a heart attack maybe. I mean, not that I care, because I don’t. He’s still an asshole.

Leah steals a piece of ice from my well and crunches it. The bones in her neck work as she chews. “Do you know what a gimlet is, Tyler?”

“Of course.”

“Okay. What’s in it?”

He  cuts  a big bite of calzone and dunks it in  his  marinara. “I’m not telling you. It’ll ruin the surprise for her. Make her do her homework. She doesn’t know any drinks. She’s a fucking embarrassment of a bartender.”

“You should be a motivational speaker,” I say, popping my towel on the bar by his glass. “I bet your co-workers would just fucking love it if you went on the road.”

He chews, smacking his lips and making a big show of enjoying all the bread and beer. “Sticks and stones, New Girl. You kiss Geronimo with that mouth?”

I blush. I can’t help it, and seeing that he’s won this round, he opens his mouth to go for Double Jeopardy but Leah pulls me off down the hall toward the office and kitchen before he can wager all he’s won. 

“Lauren, come deal with him,” she says. “Bella’s going to learn to expo.”

I follow her down the two steps, and she hands me an apron and jerks her head toward a stainless steel sink. “Suit up, wash up, and meet me in front of the line.”

I scrub in, ready to dissect the lunch rush menu, and then move on to trying to figure out the strings on this apron. I hope gimlets are easier, because this thing has more knots than a redneck Christmas float.

The warmth registers first, and then the smell of peppermint, which I suppose goes along with the Christmas theme. His hand is at my waist, drawing the apron away from me. “You’re  expo’ing today?” He’s got hard candy in his mouth. What is it with this family’s oral fetishes? “These aprons are crap. Come here. I’ll give you one of mine.”

I follow Edward, because of course I will follow him anywhere and straight to hell if I don’t back away soon, probably. His corner of the kitchen is over near the back. He runs the length of it, from the fryers to the line to the ovens, but his make table and freezer is over by the pizza oven, and so is a worn paperback (a western I don’t recognize) and his Big Gulp of Diet. 

He reaches up onto the top of the stand up cooler, the one where he puts pizza ingredients, and pulls down a better apron. No knots. 

“Hey,” I say. “Thanks! You are full of surprises.”

“Turn around,” he says, and I do, trying not to gulp, but oh, fuck me. Why can’t we be naked and having this conversation?

He folds the apron  in half and I raise my arms a little so he can pull it around me like his. When it’s knotted, I wish he’d smack me on the ass, but he’s professional now, mostly. He’s wearing a black Cullen’s shirt again. They have every color of the rainbow but his are always black. It suits him, brings out the fern quality of his eyes and the warm tan on his arms. I wonder if he’s got a farmer’s tan? I can’t picture him walking around without a shirt on much. He doesn’t seem like the type. 

“There you go.”

“I owe you one.”

“You don’t.”

“Sure I do.”

“No,” he’s shaking his head, his lips quirking a little, and that dimple is there. “It’s better if you don’t.”

“Why? You helped me out.”

“Exactly. Just helping out. I don’t want to collect on it.”

He has big, weathered hands. I can see a few pearly white scars and the deeper lines on his forearms that are probably pizza oven burns. I want him to collect.

“That’s a shame,” I say, smoothing my apron for something to do, somewhere else to focus.

“Is it?” He’s looking at me, really looking. 

I want to wear a big button that says, “I will fuck a Cullen. Ask me how.” What do I have to do, spell it out? What’s he mean, is it? He looks predatory but also…cautious. Like I’m the dangerous one? Now that’s a joke.

“Bella!” 

We both jump. “Where’d you go? We’ve got orders.”

The bastard order tape goes off, printing a round of orders that quickly string to the floor, and he’s gone, already in motion at the oven as he rips off the tickets and hangs them.

I’m trying to like Leah, to cut her some slack because she’s so obviously got issues, but a cockblocker is a cockblocker.

***

“That one gets Jerk sauce, not barbecue. See the seasoning on the chicken? That’s  Caribbean jerk not pepper.”

I think she’s serious, but she could be screwing with me.   


“Jerk sauce? What’s that?”

“Emmett’s splooge.” Seth Clearwater is funny in that way that little brothers are until they do something stupid in front of your crush, and then you have to smack them in the back of the head. 

Luckily, Edward beats me to it. He flicks him in the back of his dark head as he walks by on the way to turn a pizza. “ Shut it , Seth.”

It’s just dawning on me that Edward is kind of the language police around here. Mother fuck. That could be a problem. 

People seem to have this preconceived notion that Southern girls are all cotillions and debutante balls and Southern Living home décor and Go Bama! In my pearls and college colors at an upscale sports bar. Those people read too much Southern Living. I can tell you that Southern girls who live in those eco-friendly little houses and drink champagne and eat figs and roast pork belly (or pay someone to) or whatever the fuck, they aren’t my people. They are a tiny little minority the rest of sneer at for getting above their raisin.’

The rest of us cuss. The rest of work hard and long and are smart as whips, yes sir, but thankful we are also pretty because ugly runs bone deep,  y’all . You can’t paint that stuff away, wash it off, or pray it down. I mean, there is nothing uglier than an upstart Southern girl, putting on airs, and there is nothing prettier than a single mama working double shifts at the Dollar General and the Sonic to feed her babies and put herself through night classes at the community college. Small wonder we cuss. The fate of our culture rides not on our men, but the women. We will love you up when you need it, feed you, clothe you, whoop you, and tell you to fuck off the second you take us for granted. Why doesn’t anybody ever ask me to write a Southern Living lifestyle article? I would tell them what’s up. 

What’s up is moving away and finding myself doing stuff I never thought I’d do, in a town I should have stayed out of, to remind myself of my sin and  make Dad proud again. Oh, he’ll tell you he’s always been proud, but he wasn’t. I did the wrong thing with James, and he knew. He knew. 

Seth Clearwater isn’t of age yet, and I think about this as I try really hard to reign in the pity  party I’m throwing for one right now. Maybe Edward thinks I’m too crass, and maybe Jacob is as good as it gets, and maybe I should stop cussing in front of this kid, who can’t be more than sixteen. 

I lose track of how many more Jerk chickens we plate and sauce, because it’s on special today or some shit, and finally Seth cackles, over at the grill where he’s dropping two more breasts to sizzle. 

“Seriously, though, this shit is awesome,” he says. “Best chicken  ev-arh .”

“Really?” I say, hunting for ranch in the stand-up color across from the line. Jasper wasn’t ki dding. Roadhouse Fries are better sellers than beer, I swear.

“Really,” and he throws down another chicken breast, rubbing his face with the end of his apron, and adjusting the silver hoops in his ears. His arms are shiny with tats, and  it’s just ridiculous. He’s a little big talker. “You want one for lunch when it slows down?”

Leah is ignoring him, pulling tickets and pointing to the red words on them that show me which sauces to grab and when there are items from the salad line that I have to go fetch to add to the platters before they go out. 

“Um, maybe. How much is that?”

Leah shoots me a look. “Didn’t I tell you? You get a free lunch if you work more than a five-hour shift. Ten bucks or less, but pop is always free.”

Yeah, she forgot to mention that. I haven’t been eating much, mostly because I refuse to let Alice keep buying, even if she does have more money in a pair of her shoes than I have in my entire  sock drawer.

“Okay, yeah, I’ll try some of this world’s best chicken boob,” I say, and Edward, who is moving so fast back by the pizza oven that sweat has stained his col lar an even darker black, cough- chokes. 

“What? You don’t like boobs?”

Seth is laughing, flipping his metal spatulas high in the air like a freaking circus juggler. “Edward’s an ass man, right, dude? Legs and ass.” He ogles my shorty jean shorts and grins.

Edward says, “Shut it,” and the order tape goes off. He’s swinging that big wooden pizza flipper like a skier’s pole, whip, whip, check it, pull it, drop it, cut it, plate it, and ding. Take ‘ er out. I could watch him all day, the way his shoulders roll, and he stops with a hand to his neck, and the sweat just pours. Yes, yes, it’s hot in here. 

I drop a ranch container. Leah glares at me. When I return from the back with a wet towel to mop it up, Edward is heading out to the service bar in the downstairs section of the roadhouse. He’s got a plate full of food and his drink. His skin is gray, sweaty, and kind of unwell. The fries are jumping around on his plate because his hands are shaking so badly.

What the hell?  Surely he’s not that pissed about a little ribbing?

He’s gone. 

“Runner! I need a runner!” Leah says, her reedy little voice echoing over the din  of tickets and chopping knives and  fryers gurgling. No servers appear, and she waves a ticket at me, and han ds me the heaping tray of salad and burger and bubbly artichoke dip. 

“Take this to 14 and don’t screw it up. Carlisle and Rosalie are out there.” 

“Who?” 

“The owner. And Emmett’s girlfriend. Family.” She strings out that last word like she’s talking to a 2-year-old. 

I stare back.

“Move!”

So I do.

**

Jasper and Edward get it honest. And by ‘it,’ I mean the solid good looks, the height, and the charm. Edward favors him more than Jasper. They both have that burnished dark hair with the red cast to it. They both have the ridiculous height and the green eyes and the single right dimple. Carlisle is Edward, forty years on and beautiful in that way middle aged men always are that is so fucking unfair when we women start getting varicose veins and hairs on our nipples.

Carlisle has a newspaper in his hands, cracked open to the business section, and he’s staring down his reading glasses at me.

“Well, hello there,” he says. “I don’t believe we’ve met before.” All I hear is trust. Bottle up the essence of Jimmy Stewart and what you get is Edward’s daddy. Come to think of it, Edward’s a shade like Stewart as well – tall, handsome, quiet,  and fair -minded in his work. The elder glances at Edward, who is sitting in the corner of the booth opposite him next to the woman. 

Edward doesn’t look up. He’s already put away half a cheeseburger and doesn’t seem to be slowing down. The bar towel that matches mine that usually rides in the back pocket of his jeans (like mine) is lying on the table next to him, and whenever he isn’t using two hands to eat, he’s clenching it with his left while he shovels in fries with the right.  The sweat is still rolling off him.

“I’m new,” I say, since Edward clearly isn’t going to do any introductions. “I just started this week on day bar.” 

I take a not-so-wild guess and slide the salad down in front of Rosalie. She gives me a mega-watt Maybe She’s Born With It, Maybe It’s Maybelline smile as she unwraps her silverware. 

Rosalie  must have been born straight from the sea, steppi ng out of her clamshell like Ap h r odite with perfect hair and perfect skin and goddamn matching shoes. It’s possible I watch too much of anything Sarah Michelle Gellar has ever been in, but it’s true. Rosalie is a sight.

“Well, welcome to Cullen’s,” Carlisle says as I try to reign in my staring. Is this what all the Cullen women look like? Because I don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell. 

“Thanks,” I say,  transfer ring the rest of the food to the table. I lay out small plates and extra napkins for the artichoke dip without dropping anything or knocking over what I assume are their frosty glasses of Diet Coke. 

As focused as Edward seems o n his lunch, Carlisle and Rosalie seem supremely uninterested in theirs. The patriarch of the  Cullen clan glances at the food I’ve laid out and speaks again before I can scamper back to the kitchen. 

“So how are you liking it here so far–?”

“Bella. Bella Swan.”

“Bella Swan.”

He seems genuinely interested. He’s folded his paper and is waiting for an answer.

I want to fuck your son. I want to take him home and wash away the sweat in my giant only-decent-thing-about-my-apartment bathtub, and then get to know him better between rounds of marathon sex.

“It’s nice.”

I’m a real conversationalist.

Rosalie takes a sip of her drink and jumps in, trying to draw out intelligent words from the idiot standing in front of her with the messy braid and dirty apron. 

“I’m Rosalie Hale, Emmett’s fiancé,” she says, and I look around a little, expecting the clouds to part and the angels to sing, but of course we’re inside, and as usual it’s kind of dark in here. “Have you met Emmett yet?”

“Oh, no. Not yet. I guess he doesn’t work down here much?”

She smiles again. Damn, those teeth are blinding. I bet she gets them professionally whitened. I’ve used those Crest White Strips before and my teeth never come out looking like that.

“No, we’re usually up town but we ha ve a family staff meeting today.” She flips her  wavy  hair, honey blonde and full of depth, so if it’s a dye job like most blondes it’s a good one. Pricey. She manages not to look like she’s preening. I mean her hair is really long, like down-to-her-butt long, so I guess it’s less about preening and more about not having artichoke ends. “ Esme will be in later.”

“I haven’t met her either. Erik hired me.”

“Have you met my other son, Jasper?” Carlisle is digging into the artichoke dip, and after days of Ramen and the McDonald’s dollar menu the smell alone makes me want to hover so I can soak up some cheese and spinach by nasal osmosis.

“Um, yeah. He comes in for lunch usually. He and my friend Alice kind of hit it off.”

“Alice?” Rosalie says, her blue eyes alight like she just won the best  Chinese sweat shop  bear at the county fair shooting gallery, but Carlisle is also talking, and by weight of that deep voice he wins.

“So the only  contact with  the family you’ve had are Jasper and Edward?” He looks over at Edward again, who is polishing off the last of his burger. “I hope they’ve made you feel welcome?”

He’s barely touched me yet while Alice and Jasper are probably off right now talking cadavers and Cartier. Is that fair, I ask you?

“Um. Sure.” 

He’s looking at Edward again, who seems really involved with the rest of his fries and nacho cheese sauce. 

Carlisle turns back to me with a smile. “Well, I hope you like it here, Bella, and if there’s ever anything we can do for you, just let us know.”

I smile back and take a couple steps toward the service bar before Rosalie can pounce on the Alice thing. 

“Sure. Sure. It was great to meet  y’all ,” and then I am gone, wobbling a little on my Asics because Jesus Christ, that was awkward. I can’t get back to the kitchen fast enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is a day late. You wouldn't believe me if I told you what this week has been like for me. If you're the praying kind (or if you're not, and you're in touch with positive energy) I could realllllly use it.   
> Anyway, rock on.


	5. Jolene

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all. I missed a week. I'm sorry. My work was in panic mode and we went from preparing for going online for a few weeks to go home, take your computer, we'll see you on Zoom. It's been crazy. And then I got sick. Probably the virus. I finally get to go get swabbed tomorrow (today!) to see, but I'm on the mend after breathing treatments and steroids. My brother likely has it too and he's in the hospital for the breathing stuff also. It's been crazy. Please, please take it seriously. When the orders come to stay home in the U.S. (and we are all going to follow Calif. soon, I'm sure), please do it. Please. Read fic. Write. Work at home while petting your cats and yelling at your kids. That's my plan after I get out of isolation. Just take care of yourselves and be safe. Because I can tell you from recent experience that struggling to breathe is not fun. I am not old, and have very few pre-existing conditions. It knows no boundaries. And pray for us. I will be praying for all of you.

Charlie has always said that some women are made for work and s ome women are made for loving but t he best women even make work  feel like loving. I think he probably got it from Granddad when he was still rocking on the fron t  porch down the road, before all the steak sandwiches at the diner stopped his arteries up tighter than a snare drum, but like most things out of his mouth, it’s either true or an exaggeration of the truth . 

Rosalie Hale is a worker, I can tell. Camped out near Edward’s make tables on a stool, she’s a busy bee. She’s going through a spreadsheet of something on her shiny silver Mac and rolling through messages on her gold-encased iPhone at the same time, but whenever Emmett looks her way, she is lit with love, not gonna hide it under a bush, on no, she lets it shine.

Emmett Cullen. What can I say about Emmett that can even begin to measure up to the giant he is? I don’t mean giant like height, because he’s the only one of the Cullen men who seems not to have inherited his father’s wingspan. He is several inches shorter; enough that with Rosalie’s heels they’re pretty much even in height because she’s tall like Alice. He’s a moose, an impeccably dressed moose in a navy blue pinstriped three-piece suit that probably cost more than my rent and utilities combined.

He also likes ‘ em young, or he pays for some really great dermatology because there is no way in Hades that Rosalie Hale is a day over twenty-five. She’s firm and perky in all the right places, and I quail a little looking at her here, because I’m probably a little younger than her and I feel ten years older.

Like all the Cullens, Emmett introduces himself right away when he wanders through the kitchen where Leah and I are winding down the lunch expo’ing.

When I say my name, his big paw grips my grubby hand, and the gold nugget of a ring on his pinkie is warm on my palm from his body temperature. 

“We got us a belle?” he says, cocking his  head. “Where are you from, miss ?”

“Atlanta. Well, Atlanta- ish . Close to there. It’s on the outskirts. You haven’t heard of it.”

He’s older than Edward, yes. I’m more confused than ever because like Carlisle, his dark hair has gray creeping in at the temples. He could be thirty-five or forty-five. Carlisle might be fifty-five or sixty-eight. They could be brothers, really, sort of ageless. Vampires.

“Ooh, listen to her, Rosie,” and Rosalie looks up from her spreadsheets with a pen between her teeth, and a look, like, ‘Oh, just humor him. The big baby.’ 

“Say goodnight,” he says. “Come on. Say it, Miss Swan.”

I blow out a breath. I’m getting red in the face, I can feel it. Edward is back at the pizza oven, but he’s got the clipboard out again and he and Rosalie have been conversing about Sysco and markups and new appetizers. Now his eyes are on me, green like the money they obviously have so much of, and I am the little bumpkin, here to entertain.

I say it, “Goodnight,” and I try so hard to control that ‘ i ,’ but I am Georgian to th e core, and it comes out so strong, all the accent on night, like “ gudnahyt , ” and he throws his head back and laughs, and back there in the top,  he’s got a gold tooth. It’s a whole bicuspid of bling. Edward doesn’t wear jewelry, not even one of the plain gold chains straining against Emmett’s quarterback neck.

“You are lovely,” Emmett says, and I try to breathe, and my hand instinctively goes to my hot cheeks. “Isn’t she lovely, Edward? A real little belle.”

“Beautiful.” It’s one word, and for a minute, we stare at one another, green to brown, Yank to southerner, and I think, did he say that? Bless his heart , did he really say it? “She’s beautiful,” and when he repeats it, I am just lost, clobbered.  I need to tak e off all my clothes to cool down , preferably with him in the room. 

And a quart of whip cream. 

He picks up his ratty flannel shirt from Rosalie’s corner, shrugs into it, and walks off with his clipboard toward the walk-in cooler. He mutters something about needing “more lettuce” and he’s gone, leaving the three of us staring after him with open mouths, and me with a bleeding open heart and a tingly vajayjay.

Emmett recovers first. 

“I’m so glad you’re here, Bella Belle.  Hot damn.”

**

Seth Clearwater makes good on his promise of Jerk chicken boob. He drops it off in front of me with a smart remark about needing to see some tit for tat, and I flip him off, signal to Lauren, and  head for a booth in the corner where the servers take their breaks. It provides an excellent view of the big table downstairs by the service bar where all the  Cullens , including  Esme , are talking shop.

It’s too early to say, but I’m not sure if I like Esme Cullen. Digging into the grilled veggies which are every bit as kickass as Seth promised, I covertly watch her with them. She wasn’t as amused with my accent as Emmett, though he did point it out to her. She was nice enough, polite. Like Princess Diana, whom she favors very much, she seems calculating and a little cold. Blonde. So blonde, and so young sitting next to Carlisle and no one has explained, but I know, from the way Emmett and Edward both call her “Esme,” and from the lack of age on her face, that she is not their mother. She could be Jasper’s. It would explain his fairer coloring, and it would also explain why she barely looks any older than Emmett. I’d be shocked if she was more than a few years his senior.

This isn’t why I’m unsure of her. Men trade in; trade up, all the time. They hit midlife like a brick wall and they buy a Harley and start going out with some slut named Jessica or Cindi with an ‘i.’ The Jessicas of the world, they aren’t to blame, right? It takes two to tango, two to tango, do the dance of love...and sometimes the Jessicas, the Bellas, we’re just dumb. 

I swallow hard. No, it isn’t her age. 

It’s that hawkish look she gave me, that appraisal, sizing me up like I am competition , w hich is just fucked because she’s twenty, twenty-five years older than me, and I want Edward. Obviously. 

I just never got on with women. There’s Alice, and there’s nobody else, except old male friends I may or may not have gone down the yellow brick road with at some point. Women are catty. They are vipers where men are lions. They don’t protect, don’t rule. They bide their time and they strike. 

Esme Cullen has struck before. I can see it in her sure as the world. It’s in the way she leans over Carlisle and tucks herself into his hand that’s massaging her shoulder, like a poor little bird wearing a rock the size of a doorknob on her left hand.  I wonder how well she knows Jessica, and I wonder, too,  how soon it wi ll be before Jessica knows of me. 

**

Wild Turkey shows up after his shift is over, around four, with a fresh denim shirt on with pearl buttons. I pour his shot and after he pays, he asks for a Budweiser longneck.

“What brought you here?” he says, voice mournful like a freight train. His watery blue eyes watch me making quick work of a crate of limes. I need twelve pitchers for tonight – a Thursday. It’s a big night, Lauren said before she left for the day. Prep as much as you can. I listen to her, soak up her advice because after Saturday she’s gone for good, and I still don’t know my drinks. Tyler is a fucker, but he’s right. I need to study those, and I need to practice this. This big blade feels very Halloween in my hand, Bride of Chucky, and it’s so fucking sharp. I turn my fingers in the way she showed me , and I move the fruit to the knife instead of the knife to the fruit. Slice and slice and slice. 

“A plane.”

He pulls on his beard, which is more white than black and gnarly, but not quite full-on Duck Dynasty. 

“You a student?”

“Not anymore.” 

“Got kids?” He  resalts the rim of the bottle.

“ Me?  Lordy . No.”

“You running from somebody?”

I think of James but manage to keep my face smooth. I’m gesturing with the knife now, and he’s unaffected. I bet it’s not the first time he’s been on the other end of a blade, and I doubt it will be the last. He’s like the Chuck Norris of dirty Chicago, this one. 

“Look, man, I appreciate the concern, but this  ain’t the movie of the week. I’ve got student loans. I needed money. Simple as.”

He fingers the smokes in his shirt pocket, glaring at me through heavy glasses that are a little tinted, even indoors.  He’s got gravel in his throat. It’s all those cigarettes, probably. And I don’t know, forty years of dust and concrete mix on jobsites. 

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

I’m staring. “You read Shakespeare?” He has to. He didn’t misquote it like everybody else.

“Careful there.” He sets the bottle down a little harder than necessary. “Don’t choke on your stereotypes, kiddo.”

There’s  a  commotion and I turn to see Edward, biceps rippling against his black tee shirt, carrying a five-gallon bucket chock full of ice in each hand. Everything in me jumps. Moth to a flame is a cliché, too, a  stereotype, but God sometimes they fit. I know what happens to the moth. 

Fucking hell.

My Asics are already carrying me away, down toward the end where he’s hefting one up and pouring  it  into my well, when Wild Turkey sort of whisper hollers at me,  “It will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”

I don’t even turn around because he’s down there, and ice is flying all around, catching what light seeps in this late in the afternoon from the front windows. He’s aglow, and I just, I need him so much. I need to know him. I need to have him. I need him. 

I don’t even turn around. “Shut it, Papa,” I say over my shoulder, and above the ice cracklin g, I hear Wild Turkey laughing.

**

“Hey, thanks,” I say, sidling up next to Edward, and leaning back with both hands on a set of rubber bar mats. I don’t knock over the pitcher of straws; thank Mary, Jesus, and Joseph. “You didn’t have to bring these up. I was on my way back there next.”   


He looks down toward the cases of limes on the bar. “It’s no big deal. I knew lunch had to be busy with all the food we went through, and Thursdays are always a big prep night.”

That dimple kills me, and so does the sheer mass of him. He’s not a kid or an overgrown frat boy obsessed with steroids and protein shakes. I’m not explaining it right. It’s like, the difference between when you were in high school and crazy obsessed with boy bands, which are, as all older women know, a sex symbol for girls who haven’t had sex. And then you grow up and discover the throwback awesomeness that  is the likes of Frank Sinatra and Hank Williams, Sr. You know – real men – who have  loved and worked and touched…life. That’s Edward. He’s broad and strong and tall. His hands are scuffed all over, rough, from work it looks like, and at this hour, the shadow on his jaw makes me want to rub my face against it and feel the tingle of the roughness on my own cheeks and my lips. Whichever set is good. Both? 

Definitely both.

He hefts the next bucket and kind of elbows me a little in the arm as he does so. “Besides, it seems like you and  ol ’ Frank aren’t exactly on good terms.”

I glance down toward Wild Turkey. “Frank?”   


He shakes out the last of the ice and grabs a clean plastic cup  from behind me  to level it around the well.  His forearm is sort of boxing me in for about a half second. It’s probably the best  half-second of my entire week.  “The ice machine.” He laughs. “I mean you’re speaking, but there seems to be a lot of cussing and name calling going on.”

I fold my arms and grin at him. “You spy on me and Frank? I’m ashamed of you. Those conversations are private, Edward Cullen.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be so easy to eavesdrop if you weren’t so loud when you two are going at it back here.”

I don’t speak. I can’t. He just  said  ‘going at it,’ and all I  can see is us dumpster-loving  it up  in my dreams. Fuck Frank. Give me Oscar the Grouch’s can and  fifteen uninterrupted minutes and this man would never want to fuck in a bed again. 

The longer his words hang there the redder he gets, and just like before, the color does crazy things to my lips, one set of which I find myself chewing in frustration. The other set? I give up. Those suckers are goners.

“I, uh,” he says, the warmth working its way to the tips of his ears. “That, erm, that came out kind of …yeah.”

My fingers walk over his forearm, hairy and hot to t he touch . I  try to control my spider hand , but I think self- control around Edward is pretty much going to go about as well as not cussing at Frank. It’s possible, but it would require way more effort than I care to expend. 

I give his forearm a little squeeze and manage a wink. “It’ s okay.  I didn’t mean to d isturb you. I’ll talk to Frank. I can be quiet when I need to be.”

His fingers find the back of his neck and rub up through his hair. He’s alternating between looking at the floor and me , doing that sexy one - eyebrow lift again, but he does take a step back. I look at the distance between our feet on those holey rubber mats and shake my head. 

“That didn’t really help, did it?” 

He quirk s his lips . “Y ou are something.” I glow. I really do. I can practically feel myself levitating, yogi-style. “ Let’s just, um, try this again, huh?” I nod, eager to please him , and he continues. “So, what do you think of it so far? It must be pretty different around here than where you’re from.” 

He picks up a cup and starts pouring himself a Diet Coke. I hand him a straw. Nobody else comes behind this bar except La uren and Leah, n obody, not even the  Cullens , unless it’s  Esme . Lauren has drilled this into my head. Don’t trust anyone near your wells, near your hard liquor, near the tip jars, or your drawers. Guard the booze and the money with your life. 

I don ’t care. It’s not my money or the liquor I’m worried about him stealing.  And if I don’t start answering him with complete sentences he’s going to think I’m slow. I already know every time I open my mouth this far north people drop my IQ by thirty points. I have to step it up.

“Well,” I drift back toward the limes, center bar. “This is probably the most nerve-wracking job I’ve ever had. I’m trying to keep up and all, but Lauren’s a real pro.”

He follows, notices some dirty pitchers in the sink, and reaches for the soap.  “Lauren is a pro, but you’re doing great. You’ll get the hang of it.”

My fingers close around the knife. I take a deep breath and try not to cut off my hand when he plunges his into the soapy water and starts washing for me. His left hand is covered in soap bubbles. There’s nothing more erotic than a man washing dishes. I mean other than a man vacuuming. I fucking hate to vacuum.

“I don’t know,” I say, readying a lime and slicing for all I’m worth. All my tension goes into the fruit. Slice and dice, baby. Fuck and suck. “I don’t know my drinks. I’ve never cleaned out the coolers yet. I don’t even know how to change a keg.”

He’s plunging the newly washed pitchers into the second sink, where he’s turned on  hot water for rinsing. It drips down his forearm to his elbow as he pulls each one out and shakes it off. My eyes start to follow the line of the water sliding along his veins and arm fuzz and I nearly lose a fingernail. Fucking hell.

“ Want some help? ”

“Sure. ” 

“ Tuesdays are fruit cooler clean out day. Beer coolers are Sundays.  Take everything out. Bleach the inside. Soap the racks.  Get a stack of rags and dry it out.  Put it all back.  Kegs are as easy as checking the pressure on a car tire. But if you need to li ft one, come get me. They weigh a lot.” He eyes me. “More than you, probably. You’re on your own with the drinks. I don’t know anything about anything that isn’t Boone’s Farm or bought by Emmett. ”

It’s the most words he’s ever given me. I kind of wish I could record them and listen to them over and over, even though he’s just being nice, talking shop. I just want to hear him talk to me. I don’t care if he reads the phone book. 

Okay. That’s something Grandma would’ve said. I need to get a grip before I end up rushing home to knit him  an afghan while I watch my stories.  Real life cannot compete with Port Charles, don’t you know?

“You are something, you know that?”  He smiles as I turn his words back on him. And then the last of what he said hits me. “Boone’s Farm? You sure you aren’t from Georgia, too?”

The laughter he gives me as he’s lining the pitchers up on clean rags to dry warms me u p from the inside out. T here are just all kinds of nursery rhymes  up in  here. Lauren is Schehera zade. He’s the Pied Piper of Hamlin, leading me to ruination with warm arms and  pruny fingers.  Rosalie is Sleeping Beauty. Carlisle is Cinderella’s Daddy.  I don’t know who I am. There aren’t  m any  home wreckers in children’s literature. 

I just…can’t keep watching that dimple an d his cleft chin. I turn back to the limes, ripping off sheets of plastic wrap to cover the pitchers I’ve finished so far. “Okay, Boone’s Farm. I don’t suppose you can conjure up some trees and about five hundred bucks while you’re giving me all the answers?”

He’s not looking at me. He’s inspecting the pitchers really closely. Come to think of it, he hasn’t looked me in the eye for most of this little conversation. He’s been paying attention to the dishes. 

He pulls the plug on both sides of the sink and the gurgle, gurgle, suck, and swirl sounds very loud in the momentarily quiet bar. “Lauren never has been known for big tip outs. Sorry. I know that part must suck.” He starts cleaning out the sinks with a green scrubber. “You missing home? It is kind of concrete- ish around here. I know this place…”

“Yeah?” I put down the knife. “Hey. You can look at me you know. I’m right here.” 

He glances up, but his eyes are on the  neons behind me. 

“I am looking at you.”

My hands go to my hips. “No, you’re not.” I do the ‘I’ve got my eye on you,’ thing, pointer and middle finger to his eyes, and sweeping over to my face. “Why won’t you look at me? I swear I don’t bite.”

His eyes finally meet mine. His tongue peeks out just a little over his bottom lip, and I step forward. He’s calling me to him. He’s not using words but he doesn’t have to. I don’t know how this keeps happening. He’s all, “I am  L ocutus of  Borg. Resistance is futile.”

I will be assimilated. From now on, I will service him. Or something.

“I’m looking,” he says. “I see you.”

Somebody smacks their hand on the bar and we both jump.

“Hey, can I get some change?”  Esme says, tapping her fingers on a ten. “The internet radio’s on the fritz. I’m going to go set up the juke box.”

It would be really bad manners to strangle his stepmother with my bare hands, wouldn’t it?

“Absolutely, Mrs. Cullen.” I plaster the second fakest smile in the room onto my face and take her money to the register. She is all smiles, mega-watt, bullshit smiles. 

Edward gives me a wave and wanders back toward the kitchen, retying his apron as he goes. Oh, God. Don’t fucking go. Please!

She takes the roc ks glass of quarters I hand her and turns away without a word. A few minutes later, I am finishing the last pitcher of limes when the  jukebox whirs to life. 

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” I mutter it under my breath, even though there aren’t any customers since Wild Turkey somehow wandered away in the middle of my moment with Edward. 

Esme sets the nearly empty glass back on the bar in front of me on  her  way to the kitchen. “Here you go, dear. Keep the change.” She smiles again. “Do you like this song?”

Lord forgive me, I smirk at her. 

“Oh, I love it. Dolly is good people.”

And then I pick up the glass and walk away from her, singing along sweet-as-pie, “ I cannot compete with you, Jolene …”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There. I didn't take the extra time to fix the html spacing that gets off every. single. time. I wanted to get this up. A nice long chapter as a sorry. You can curse at me for being late or tell me I'm pretty in the comments if you want. I'll take either.


	6. J-e-l-l-o

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming to you live from the pandemic. I hope you live in one of those states with a governor smart enough to order a shelter-in-place. If you're overseas, I hope it's almost over for you. Because shit's about to get real here in the USofA. I'm praying for all of y'all. Pray for us, too.

Edward’s gone. He didn’t say goodbye. Seth is scraping down the grill for second shift when I clock out slowly in the service bar, totally looking around through the little window to the line for him but trying not to look like I’m looking for him. 

“He’s not here.” Seth is squirting the grill with a bottle of something clear and the steam is rising up all around him. He works the scraper fast, moving with the fluid, and there’s so much steam and heat, I half expect his tattoos to drip off his arms like watercolors. 

“Who?”

What?  Playing dumb worked for Daisy. 

“Boss man. Him and most of the fam-damily cut out of here an hour ago. He drove today so he left early to beat traffic.”

I blink, deer in headlights. Boss man. I get stuck on that for a hot minute, because oh, that sounds promising. I’ve never really been into being dominated, but I never met a hair puller or a spanker I didn’t like. Maybe I could be the boss, though. Now that has possibilities…

“Earth to Bella.” Seth waves his towel at me. “He’s not here. Go home already.” The big silver spacers in his ear lobes shake as he teases me. How is this guy related to Type A-OCD Leah? 

“What? I wasn’t looking for Edward.” I’m searching for my train card and shoving my apron under the service bar into the uniform bin for cleaning. I am suddenly in serious need of a shower and an attitude adjustment. He left without saying goodbye and went home early, home to where she’s probably waiting. Going off of Rosalie and Esme, I picture June Cleaver with the pot roast and pearls, but with sexy heels and Ariana Grande hair and … parts. I try to keep the bitterness out of my voice but it’s a piss-poor effort. “I try not to keep track of other people’s boyfriends.” 

Seth scratches his chin with the scraper, a deep thinker for sure in deep thought. “Right on. And I am totally not going to destroy a fatty when I get out of here.” He flips the utensil into the dish area across from the line. “But have it your way.”

Fucking city men and their fucking know-it-all attitudes. 

**

It’s Rosalie who catches up to me in the parking lot, so apparently the entire Cullen clan did not leave the building. 

She’s the prettiest pack horse I ever did see, click clacking across the lot in four-inch royal blue Ferragamos, hanging on to her giant Michael Kors purse, an Italian leather laptop bag, a bottle of water, and her cell phone. Damn Alice and her total brand management. I cannot unsee these things. 

She’s not a bit flustered, despite the fact that it’s easily ninety degrees out here and I am sweating like a whore in church. “I was wondering if you might consider doing me a favor, Bella?”

If the favor involves letting your soon-to-be brother-in-law facefuck me, then sure, I got that. Where do I sign?

“What kind of favor?”

“How do you feel about being a shot girl?” 

Why do I feel like any position that has ‘girl’ in the title is probably illegal?  “Come again?”

“Well, Esme mentioned that your tip outs hadn’t been that great this week, and our shot girl is not what you’d call…dedicated. It’s not a hard job. You just walk around the bar and sell Jell-O shots and shooters and stuff.”   


Her Majesty Queen Creepy Ass of Bitchlandia?

“Esme?”

“Yeah, I think Leah might’ve mentioned it to her, or maybe Edward.” Her phone chimes and she turns it in her hand. “Oh, crap. I’m sorry, but let me just grab this real quick, okay? Edward probably forgot something again.”

She takes the call as I’m nodding, sticks one finger in her ear to drown out the traffic rolling by, and walks about five steps away. I can hear her perfectly. “No, I haven’t left yet. What do you need?” She pauses. “Yeah, I can go back in and grab it. What? No. I’m just standing here in the parking lot talking to Bella. Huh?” 

She looks over at me and waggles the pinky on the hand she’s using to clutch the phone. “Edward says hey.”   


Dear Vagina, heel!

I am the picture of nonchalance. I give her the disinterested chin dip and channel Andy Griffith. “Hey to Edward.” 

“She says hi. No, we’re just chatting. About what? About stuff. Geez. Since when did you become a member of the Red Hat Club? You want me to ask her where she lives, too, nosey?” There’s a pause. She’s tapping her chin with one perfectly manicured finger. “I’m sorry! I was just kidding around. Bella isn’t paying any attention to me running my mouth, are you, Bella?”

I’m wishing I still had my bar towel actually. It’s not really that hot in Chicago, not Georgia summer bake the red clay under your feet hot, but this parking lot is black tar. It’s so hot I feel like I could jump and make a dent in it. Talking to Edward, even second-hand? It’s not helping with my case of the vapors. I manage a bored-looking shrug and reach up to wind my heavy braid into a bun, pulling the tail through until the swampy, ratty mess is at least off my neck.

She finishes up the call and steps back over to me, stowing her phone in one of the giant bags apologetically. “Anyway, where were we?” She’s tapping her chin again and seems genuinely distracted.

“J-e-l-l-o?” I sing-say, wiping my forehead on the sleeve of my shirt. 

“Oh, yeah. Anyway, it’s not hard. You just wear something cute. Eric will set you up with shots in the kitchen and you go back to him whenever you need more. Friday night. The other shot girl will be there, at least for a little while, to show you the ropes.” 

I cross my arms but think better of it when my skin sticks together. “And she’s not gonna be pissed that I’m horning in on her territory?”   


Rosalie laughs. “Oh, no. I think she’ll probably be relieved. Her heart’s really not in it.”

“Does it affect my hours? I mean, I need the work at the bar since Lauren is gonna be leaving. I can actually keep my tips and stuff soon.”

Her fingers are hovering over the edge of her Bambi-soft bag like she wants to go for her phone again but is trying to resist the urge. “No, no. Not at all.” The next thing, though, she’s pulling it back out, and tap tapping away. “Shot girls aren’t hourly. It’s not even pay roll. You just work for tips.” She’s distracted for a second while she sends something and her sleek little phone chirps like R2D2’s skinny cousin. “We don’t even care if you report any of it for taxes. It’s pretty well under the table. Easy money.” 

I can’t resist asking. “How much easy money?”

She’s still fiddling with her phone. “Hmm? Oh, probably a couple hundred bucks. It’s not bad.” 

A couple hundred bucks? 

“You got yourself a shot girl,” I say, and probably startle the hell out of her by pulling her hand away from her phone and wringing it in mine, so thrilled that I don’t even care that my palms are sweaty and calloused while hers are cool and smooth.

Sometimes when the carpetbaggers come calling, you open the damn door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is anybody even reading this shit? It was pretty popular on ff but I feel like I'm posting into the void here, except for a couple of you. Anyway, hi.


	7. Practical Magic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello from the insiiiiide! 
> 
> Y'all making it? Everyone healthy? Much love.

When the door slams later, I stick my toe up to the hot water handle of the bathtub and turn it off. I lean back against the edge of the porcelain tub and holler into the front room so Alice can hear me. “For God’s sake, I hope you brought alcohol. I’m gonna need a great big glass of ‘forget Edward Cullen’s hot ass’ before this night is over.”

She sticks her head around the bathroom door for a split second before disappearing back into the living room. Her hair is in one of those elaborate retro updos that I can’t make work to save my life. “Jasper’s here,” she says, eyeballing me. “Put some fucking clothes on.”

Well. I swear.

By the time I get out of the bathroom, Alice has changed into running clothes and double braids. Jasper is sitting in the middle of my nearly vacant living room, pulling my work out of boxes. He’s got a sizable stack of frames propped around the edge of the walls, grouped by type – charcoal and graphite drawings, landscapes, oil and watercolor. 

I’m toweling off my hair and just thinking, what the fuck. I mean, really. Who are these two? I feel like I’m trapped in some screwed up hybrid of House Hunters and America’s Next Top Model.

“Are all these yours?” Jasper’s pulling out an oil of Jackson Square at night. The colors of the New Orleans square swirl into the deep blue of the sky. 

I flop onto the cheetah lounger with Bails alongside and start pulling a brush through my hair. “Tell you what,” I say. “You forget what you just heard me say about your brother, and I’ll pretend you didn’t just walk in here and totally invade my privacy.”

He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t even have the grace to look ashamed. He’s hanging onto the edge of the frame and his deep green eyes, so like Edward’s, are following the trail of his complete lack of boundaries all around my front room, moving from details of skin and bone to waves of sea and houses of cinder block. He’s unpacking my life. I don’t want it unpacked. It’s supposed to stay in the fucking boxes. 

“It’s all yours?” He’s shaking his head. “What in the world are you doing working bar, lady?”

Bails stretches and kneads his claws into the edge of my yoga pant-covered thigh. Asshole pussy. “Making some fucking money,” I say. “Isn’t that why most people work?”

Alice grabs my shoes and chucks them at me. “Go change. Jasper is taking us to dinner. We need to run first.”

“But I just bathed!”

“Downtown. He’ll take us by Cullen’s Café.” 

It’s a Mexican standoff. I glare at her but those striking eyes always win. She knows me and I know her. I want to see the other restaurant, and she has to run. We have to run. 

“Fine.” I unceremoniously drop Bails onto the floor. He shakes out his black fur and narrows his eyes at me, yowling his displeasure. “Ok, ok. Fine. But what’s he gonna do while we run?” I thumb over at Jasper who is still being a nosey prick. 

“I’ll go get my tools out of the car and hang some of these.” He sweeps a hand toward the oils. “They don’t belong in a box.”

“The fuck you will.”

Alice shakes her finger at me like the teacher’s daughter she is. “Don’t talk to him that way. He’s being nice.”

“If this is nice I hope I never see him mean.”

He’s holding up one of the one of Jackson Square like a peace offering. “Just a couple? This one’s great.” 

“Absolutely not.”

Alice gives me the bitch face and I roll my eyes. “Fine! You can hang some shit but not that one. None of the paintings. Just the charcoals. And nothing, and I mean nothing– ” I cross the room and pluck up a sketch of James on horseback, “with this fucker in it. These go back in the goddamn box. You got me?”   


Jasper’s dimple surfaces. I swear he’s like a cartoon character when he smiles. It changes his entire face. “I got you.”

Bails follows me to my bedroom, and I slam the door on the dastardly duo in the front room. “At least I’ve still got you,” I say to him, yanking a sports bra out of my dresser. “Because with friends like that, I don’t need any fucking enemies.” 

**

Jasper takes us to the Grand Lux at Ontario and Michigan above AT&T. We sit facing Michigan Avenue, looking out through the elaborate vines and swirls across the giant plate glass windows, and it is lux. Jesus, it’s so much luxury it’s almost embarrassing. 

I can’t pay, not for any of it. I could’ve, before. I think back to Victoria standing in my studio with a goddamn can of Krylon. I don’t know why, but when I look at the vines and the crazy upscale Asian deluxe décor, heavy ornamentation, weird floating mushroom lamps, her words are so clear, practically as crisp as these wonton appetizer things. “I don’t give a fuck what it’s worth. It’s trash. You’re trash. When are you going to realize you aren’t anything? Not to anybody!” 

We sit in a dark wood and cream and velvet booth. Jasper and Alice are cozy across from me, knees together again, his hand in her hair most of the time. She doesn’t do this shit; get involved. She doesn’t fall. I do, and she sort of ducks her head at me and picks me up and dusts me off. I want to shake her teeth out. Wake up, Alice. He’s not one of your gay designers. He’s dangerous. 

She tries to order a salad and he’s having none of it. They compromise with the mahi mahi but she switches out the mashed potatoes for asparagus, and he gives me the look, and I just roll my eyes. She’s a model. What the fuck does he expect?

Biology major, already taken the MCATs, studies psych for electives. I wonder how much he’s strung together, if he already knows about her. He knows people. He’s got that empathy thing down. He looks at you and you feel like it’s your grandma and she’s turned down the volume on her stories and stopped stirring whatever’s on the stove, crouched down to your level and looked you right in the eye because it’s time to listen to you – only to you. He will be an excellent doctor. Smart, with a good beside manner, you know the ones that are never accepting new patients because so many people want them. 

“So how long have you been an artist?” He’s cutting a slice of this white flour-heavy bread and smearing it with real butter. He expects me to give him a real answer the way he expects Alice to eat that. 

He is not getting his way any more tonight.The boxes and the nails? That was enough.

“I’m not an artist.”   


Big bite and soft chews. He’s a neat eater. “Having seen your apartment, I would beg to differ.”

I take the bread away from him and attack it with the serrated edge of my heavy knife. “I’m a realist. You should try it sometime.”

He’s not ruffled and it annoys me. I want to make one of the Cullens at least slightly uncomfortable. I mean, other than Esme.

“Your art is stunning.” He turns to Alice, offering her the bread, which she accepts, but it’s a small corner that gets torn and raised to her lips. “How long has she been doing work like that?”

“As long as she’s been modeling,” I say while she chews, because Alice will say too much if I let her.

You said you started at thirteen?” He’s feeding her more bread, but just like that the conversation turns to more comfortable territory because models are like actors – they get off on attention. They want everyone to love them. It works for Alice, because she’s not Cara Delevinge, flipping the bird and pissing everyone off while she snorts up her salary. She’s a genuinely nice person. People don’t just love her, they fucking adore her. I sure do.   


Jasper seems to be no different. He’s wrapped up in her, tangled up in his underwear. 

“Yeah, thirteen.” She pushes the bread away and reaches for her lemon water. 

“How?” 

“How what?” 

“How did you start modeling?” 

“She hasn’t told you that story?” I snort. “Meryl took us to Atlanta to buy school clothes and we sweet-talked her into the mall for a while. We were coming out of Spencer’s gifts and Elite was doing this model search thing in the courtyard.”

Alice jumps in. “And me and Bella are standing there watching these girls just throw themselves across this stage –”

“It was sooo pathetic,” I say, remembering. “I mean they were crying if the judges didn’t pay attention to them. It was like, cheer camp on steroids.”

“You went to cheer camp?” Jasper’s fingers are on her throat when she swallows the water, tracing the vein in her neck. I ought to be grossed out, but they look so right, so good, that I just can’t drum up the judgment. 

“Only once. That was her idea, by the way.” Alice glares at me as she rats me out, and I flip her off. “She thought it would get us boyfriends.”

“It didn’t. Anyway, we’re hanging out next to Spencer’s with all our Harry Potter loot, and this lady comes over and asks Alice where our mom is, and she about shit because this chick heard us making fun of those girls and she thought we were in trouble.” 

Alice is laughing now, just flat out guffawing and I swear to God, it’s a sight. Her mouth opens up and all those shiny white teeth appear and it’s a religious experience, watching Alice laugh. She’s the closest thing to religion I’ve had in a long time, my Alice. She covers her face with her hands, and Jasper pulls them away, because he is just as taken as I have always been and probably doesn’t want her to hide her face. She wipes at the corners of her eyes, because her mascara is going to start running, she’s laughing so hard. 

“And so Mom shows up then, and she says to this lady –” She’s wheezing. “She says, ‘I don’t know what they did to offend you, ma’am, but that one’s mine so she can’t help it, and that one, that one–‘” 

She is laughing too hard to finish so I do it for her, practically choking on my main course. “‘Well, I’ve told her Daddy for years that her mouth is the biggest part about her!’” We are in hysterics. I’m going to snort out my pasta, and I kind of am, and it’s so gross, but it’s so damned funny, too. 

Jasper looks between us like he has stumbled into a Laurel and Hardy sketch. “What happened then?” he says, all giddy like a sexy Cullen schoolboy. “What happened?”   


Alice is sucking down her water, trying to get herself under control. I breathe heavy, like shew-ee, and try to sew it up. “Nothing much. She offered Alice a contract on the spot, and Meryl told her she was full of shit.”

He blinks. “She didn’t?”

Alice cackles. “Well, not exactly. What she said was, ‘Are you shitting me?’”

“And she wasn’t. Alice was in Milan in a month, right in the middle of the spring shows, and she signed with Ford two years later when her contract ran out.”

He’s holding her hand on the table. “And the rest is history?”

I sober just a bit. “Ancient history.”

He watches me while Alice finally calms down enough to tuck back into her fish. She keep shaking her head and grinning at me, and I cannot help but return it. I love her to pieces. She is the Sandra Bullock to my Nicole Kidman and we are going to jump off our house one day in striped socks and witch’s hats and float right down to the ground, easy as pie. 

Jasper finally pushes away his plate. He pats his non-existent stomach like an old man, and it’s kind of adorable. “God, that was good. I need a drink, though.” He brings her hand to his lips. “And something sweet.” 

She’s purring. “Ooh. What’s good here?”

“Not here. Let’s go to the Café. I’ll get Rosie to make crème brulee.”

He pays and we make a bathroom run. On the way out, Alice grabs a peppermint from the bar, lit with warm orange lights and glittering glass. I am making my way through the throng of people, towing her along, when her hand slips out of mine. I turn to see what happened to her just in time to watch him sweep her into a kiss under the mushroom chandelier. It kind of goes on. They are a romance novel cover, one of those new-age chick lit ones with the woman in Louboutins and the man all GQ, and people gawk because Alice makes people gawk anyway, and when you add a Cullen to her, it’s just blinding. 

I’m so happy for her I could burst. And I kind of want to cry because fuck me. 

I will never, ever have that. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Psst. Please, please tell me if it's just shit and that's why only Donna and Olivia and a handful of other (Margey?) read it anymore. I miss you ALL. Also, I love Donna, Olivia and Margey for reading. You're my favorites!


	8. Me and Kittens

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to Pa Trizia, who made a beautiful new banner for this fic! Check it out on my FB and Twitter accounts.

Rosalie makes the best crème brulee I have ever had. Apparently, she doesn’t cook much anymore because she’s busy helping Emmett run the whole show, but for us – for Jasper – she makes an exception. 

She brings the ramekins out on a big silver serving platter, flaming like baked Alaska. It’s beautiful and sort of stupidly mesmerizing. There are five of them. Emmett pulls a chair up to the end of the giant blue velvet bench and explains that the delicious smell coming off the flames is double oaked Woodford Reserve. Rosalie pours a thimble over the sugar atop each ramekin and lights it, resulting in the gorgeous crunchy caramel, flavored just so with bourbon. I think I’ve died and gone to heaven. Well, almost. Edward isn’t here of course. 

Rosalie hands the tray off to a bus boy and I scootch over as she slides in next to me. “Well, what do you think?” she asks as I put the first bite in my mouth, and I can’t even talk, it’s so good. 

What I get out sounds like “Mmmph,” and Emmett is laughing and giving me a thumbs up, pinkie ring glinting even in the low mood lighting from the 1950s chandeliers. He takes a large bite of his own, snaps his fingers, and then he’s shoving his chair back and disappearing down the stairs to the bar. Cullen’s Café is stacked, deep and not so wide, with spiral staircases of wrought iron on each side of the entrance, leading to the upstairs seating. There is a wrought iron balcony running around a circle in the middle of the upstairs that provides a view into the goings on of the ground level seating and bar. 

Apparently, Esme designed much of this place herself. Jasper is quick to brag on his mother, and I try, as I slow down and savor each delicious bite of cream and egg and sugar, to remember that a woman who raised such a man cannot be all bad. Our children are our monuments, Grandma said. We build them up with sand and sugar and spank them on the butts to send them off into a world of ice and fire. If they stand against it, if they do not wither in the wind and flame, we have done our jobs well. Jasper is thriving. He positively glows. I watch him feed Alice, and I think of how she is growing with him, right here in front of my face. 

Emmett returns with another tray loaded down with heavy mugs made of some sort of handmade pottery, painted the deep blue of the velvet booth, with silver star accents. I feel like I am at a tea party with the Mad Hatter on steroids. 

“You have to try this, ladies.” He serves Rosalie first, then Alice and me, and lastly Jasper and himself. I take a break from the dessert to discover that he has brought us another dessert. “Hot mulled wine,” he says, and he drinks a deep drought of his own mug. “I had to promise the Germans in Daley Plaza they could name our first kid to get this stuff.” Rosalie snorts and takes a deep drink and the heat off the mugs brings color to her cheeks in the prettiest way, like the warmth of a candle on the snowy night that is her impeccable skin. 

The wine tastes fruity and decadent. It’s so hot I have to keep blowing on it to get it down, and maybe when we leave the heat will bother me, but right now it’s perfect with the whiskey-spiked brulee. I’m not even halfway through the glass as Emmett is asking me to say “wine” again and calling me Bella Belle, when I realize that this stuff is stronger than it tastes like it would be. I’m warming up in the loveliest way, and loosening up, too. 

“I’ll say it again if you tell me what is up with that pinkie ring.” I gesture at the gold nugget on his finger. “You look like a gangster. Or…something.” 

“I plucked this sucker out of the ground myself.” 

“You did not.” 

“Au, contraire, little Belle.” He waggles his thick fingers at me and I think how perfectly comfortable he must be in his sexuality to behave this way but then again, a girlfriend like Rosalie would make a guy comfortable. I mean there’s just no argument. I would fuck her, and I am only ever slightly bisexual when drinking, which Alice can attest to, actually. Mostly, I am horny, and when drinking I am an equal opportunity flirter. 

What? I’m also honest. 

“I did. Me and Edward went out west a couple years ago, and we went mining at one of those ‘you dig it’ places in South Dakota.” He holds up his pinky like a badge of honor. “And I dug this sucker right out of the ground and panned it out of a bunch of dirt and rocks and shit.” 

Of course, I latch onto the most interesting part of this conversation. “Did Edward find any gold?” 

“He did.” 

“Well, what did he have made with his?” 

“Not a thing. The last time I saw it, it was still sitting in the change jar on his kitchen counter.” He turns his hand so his finger catches the light. “Edward is not known for his style.” 

Jasper raises his mug, and Alice joins him. “To Emmett and Rosalie,” he says, his other hand missing somewhere under the table in Alice’s vicinity, “to style ad smarts. And we all know which is whose!” 

“To Emmett and Rosalie,” we all repeat, and drink some more, and I cannot help saying again, “Bless my soul, this is some good wine,” and Emmett is practically clapping. 

“She said wine! She said it. Listen to that. It’s at least three syllables!” 

His phone rings before I can lean past Rosalie to smack him. 

“’Sup?” He’s silent a moment while whoever it is on the other end speaks. “At work, still…yeah. No, we aren’t that busy. Jasper showed up and he brought company so we’re having a drink…actually Bella and Alice are here. Here, say hi!” He tosses his phone at me, and I have never been so thankful for otter boxes because I am warm and clumsy and the stupid thing hits the white linen-covered table with a thump. Alice disengages from her Jasper cocoon over on her side of the booth long enough to wince in my direction. 

“Smooth,” Emmett says, and I roll my eyes, picking up the phone. 

“Hello?” And there goes another perfectly good pair of panties. 

“Hey, Edward.” Don’t say anything stupid. Don’t tell him you want to fuck him over the phone. 

I hear some commotion on the other end of the line and then the soft click of a door. “Hi,” he says. “I hope Emmett’s not bugging you too much?” 

“Him?” I sip my wine for something to do. “Not a ‘tall. He brought us warm wine stuff. He’s harmless.” 

“He is most definitely not harmless. How do you like the café?” 

It sounds like he’s sucking on something, maybe his lip? Or a toothpick? It’s not my boobs, and that’s the only important thing, really. It’s a travesty, a complete waste of an oral fetish. 

“It’s real fancy,” I say, and internally kick myself because hello, Ellie Mae. Why don’t you ask him where the cement pond is? “I mean, it’s just lovely. But I think I like the Roadhouse better, you know?” 

I can almost hear his smile through the phone, and I kind of wish we were on Face Time so I can see it, but then he’d see me, and I am two and a half sheets to the wind and probably showing it by now. 

“I like it better, too,” he says. 

Oh, the wine, and the brulee, and his voice, and the wine. I am swimming in a sea of sensation. Rosalie is asking Emmett about a chef’s special for Friday and I am going slowly crazy here. “Good Lord, ah love your voice.” 

Oh, for the love of dear eight-pound, six-ounce newborn infant Jesus. What is wrong with me? 

“What?” 

“Nothing. Oh, God. Nothin’. I’ve had too much wine.” 

Rosalie is patting my arm now, and trying so hard not to laugh while her idiotic fiancé doesn’t hold back. He is bent double over there and I’m going to kill him and steal that gold nugget right off his stupid, sausage hand. 

“You’re funny when you’re drinking,” he says, finally. “Cute.” 

“Oh, yeah, adorable. Me and kittens. Adorable little…” Don’t say pussies. Don’t say pussies. “Yeah.” 

“You and kittens?” 

“I don’t know. Ah really don’t. Hey! Emmett said you found a gold nugget.” 

“What?” I’m probably giving him whiplash at this point. “Oh, yeah. I did. That was really fun. I’m going back out west soon, actually. For vacation. Have you ever been there?” 

“I went to St. Louis once. I hated it. They’re all assholes.” 

“Really? Why?” 

“I don’t know. They were all just really creepy, saying stuff to me and Alice. Not even just the homeless people, I mean even the business men. I didn’t like it.” 

He’s quiet. “So you’ve never been further west than St. Louis? You’ve never seen the red rocks or the Grand Canyon?” 

“Nope.” I have another warm sip from my mug. 

“The colors are really great, and it’s so big and open out there.” The wistfulness in his voice, it makes me want to paint somewhere western and give it to him, which is crazy talk, because hello. I don’t paint anymore. 

“Maybe I’ll go sometime so I can paint it.” 

“You paint?” 

“Hmm? No.” 

“But you just said –” 

“It’s the wine,” I say. “Ah don’t know what I’m sayin.’” 

“You’re saying a lot of funny stuff tonight. I kind of like it.” 

His voice is sugar and flame, as hot and melty and yum as the top of the crème brulee I just ate, and I want to eat him up with a spoon, yes, I do. 

“Edward?” It’s a woman’s voice I hear in the background. It’s faint but it’s growing closer. “Edward? Where did you go?” 

“I should go,” he says. “Tell Emmett goodbye for me.” 

“Okay,” I say. “Okay. Buh-bye.” 

He doesn’t say goodbye. He says, “Goodnight,” soft and husky. 

The phone goes dark. 


	9. I have been, and always shall be, your friend.

[Thanks to Pa Trizia for the pretty teaser for this chapter and for this awesome story banner.](https://writereadeditbleed.wordpress.com/#jp-carousel-38)

Alice leaves on an 8:30 flight out of O’Hare to Atlanta. She’ll spend three days back in Georgia and then she’s on a plane again – Air France to Paris to film a commercial for Lancôme. There will be puppies and some sort of plaid fall dress with tall boots and she will never speak because Southern accents don’t sell makeup or perfume or anything much that isn’t camouflage or butter-flavored. 

Jasper goes with us to the airport, and while she double checks her seat with Delta, he begins to droop a bit. I know the feeling. I never get used to her leaving either. Ten years of practice do not an expert make.

We stand outside the secure area with her purse and carry-on while she handles her checked bags. He is looking at his feet, at his dark Doc Martins, and I have to stifle a laugh. The doc wears Docs.

“Stop looking like she’s dying,” I say. “This is her job.”

He looks up, and the embarrassment is there but those eyes are also a bit moist at the edges. I swear to Christ if he cries, all bets are off. I am not a crier, but I cannot stand to see a grown-ass man cry. It will be the end of The Notebook up in here, and oh my God, Allie and Noah and the snot snobs. 

“How do you do this over and over?” He says, and those eyes. He’s not Noah. He’s Arliss, and Old Yeller has to be put down cause he’s got the rabies and there’s no other way. 

I give him my best big brother with the shotgun look, that this-is-the-way-it-has-to-be stare. “What’s the alternative? You want her to come back?” His chin quivers but he nods. “Then you got to watch her go.”

Take that shit, Fess Parker.

He is still nodding when she sweeps back over, heels clicking against the tiles because she’s Alice, and of course she flies in heels and nice clothes. There might be paparazzi around, and she is nothing if not prepared. 

“We should be low key,” she says to him with a small smile as she touches his face, strokes his jaw. “If we end up online, it’s you they’ll bother, not me. You need to be able to focus on school.” 

“I don’t care.” I kind of love how petulant he is, because he sounds like me when we were thirteen and she dropped out of our county school, “Go Dragons!,” for tutors and frequent flier miles. 

“You will care.” She’s cupping his jaw now, running her fingers down his neck and across his shoulders in his plain black tee shirt. “They aren’t known for being nice.” Nahce. 

Two women about our age are making their way toward security and one of them, the blonde, stops and whispers to the other. This happened last night when we were leaving Cullen’s. Alice had to sign some autographs to make them go away. And still, it doesn’t seem to get through to Jasper that our Alice is more. She is theirs, too, by default, by rights. They take a part of her in exchange for the money and the flights and seeing the world from atop stilettos. It’s just the way it is. 

The blonde produces her phone, and she thinks she’s being sly, but she’s not. I see her, and so does Alice, who smiles and gives a little wave. I don’t know what Jasper is thinking, but in the next second, he’s grabbed her arm, pulled her flush to his chest, and is giving it to her but good. 

I ought to stop looking because she’s my friend, and this should be gross, but yeah, no. I haven’t gotten laid in way, way too long, and this is so much pretty in one place. It’s like chick porn. 

It goes on, and on, and on. I mean if he’s hoping to leave an international impression, it’s got to be working. I might cancel my flight if somebody was kissing me like this, laying me back toward the ground in his sinewy arms, working his way over and into my mouth and down my jaw and throat. She’s gasping, and pulling at his hair. There’s a woman already in the security line with two kids, probably six and nine, and she’s hustling them around in the opposite direction and glaring, like get a room. Cell phone lady is snapping away, and probably about to make a quick payday, if she’s so inclined.

His long fingers dig into her waist, and when she goes almost limp, he reaches into her there, where her top meets her skirt, and sort of hoists her back up to her feet. He kisses her again, his tongue wetting her swollen lips with swift little licks like a cat enjoying a bit of cream. 

I snap my fingers. “Hey. Hey! Romeo. Pack it in. There are children present.”

They break apart by inches, breathing ragged. Alice just touches her lips and giggles. Giggles. The shameless hussy. 

“You’re about as low-key as Miley Cyrus, you know that?”

That smile, lop-sided and smooth, tells me he doesn’t give a shit. 

“All right, all right, break it up. I want a hug, if you can spare her a minute.”

He removes his surgically attached fingers from her waist and she sort of hops into my arms. I pat down her fluffed up hair, muttering the whole time. “It’s goddamn indecent. And I am so fucking jealous, you whore.”

Alice leans down and presses her lips near my ear in a whisper. “You better hope it runs in the family, girl,” she says. “Because hole-lee hell.” 

I shake her, but just a little. “Not helping. Not helping!”

We are both laughing, because oh, why not? I am going to miss her so fucking much. 

She breaks off the hug before either of us starts weeping like a cherry tree in March and digs through her voluminous bag to hand me a small parcel. “For you,” she says. “Make me happy and use it.”

“What?”

“Nuh-uh. After I’m gone.”

I blink at her. “This better not be condoms. You do know his brother is standing here, right? I mean, talk about embarrassing.”

Alice crosses her arms, shaking that mane of dark velvet hair around her. “It’s not. Now stop. You’re embarrassin’ yourself, darling.”

I blow out a heavy breath. “Yeah, okay. Fine.”

Jasper keeps mercifully quiet. 

They have me take their photos with both their cell phones, and then mine, so that’s three, and we want one of all of us, but we’re not asking Blondie no matter how desperate we are, so Jasper takes my phone and holds out his long arm and we all squish together in front of the Delta sign like a bunch of nerds. Alice is radiant. Jasper and I look like two sad little turkeys waiting for Thanksgiving. 

“That looks awful,” she says. “Once again, with style!”

Jasper glares at her, and it’s so cute, him being pretend-mad, and I say, “Yes, sir, Mr. Gunn.” 

This time Jasper waggles his eyebrows and I put my finger to my chin, deep thinker style, and Alice sticks out her tongue and crosses her eyes. This is a much better photo and Alice squeals and says, “Ooh! Let’s do Miley!” so we do. I am saving that bitch for posterity and possible future blackmail because one day a photo of the Chief of Staff sticking his tongue into the V of his fingers like a has-been pop star is gonna be worth some serious cash-o-lah. 

She has to go. She’s in first class and they board first. We watch her go through security, removing her heels and heavy jewelry like a pro and slapping her iPad on the conveyer belt. 

She steps through into the little booth that always reminds me of Scotty’s transporter room, red toenails and all, and puts her hand up, fingers splayed, toward me. Live long and prosper. I have been, and always shall be, your friend. I raise my hand at her in Vulcan salute. No, we aren’t criers, but both of us bawled like little girls at that scene in both movies. It’s our airport thing now. Nerds, you know. Supermodel and super nothing, but nerds. 

Jasper throws his arm around me in solidarity. We watch her until she’s out of sight. 

**

Back on the train, I unfold the plain brown paper on the package to find a fresh set of charcoals in a soft leather wrap. I take a deep cleansing breath, pretending that I am the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It sort of worked for John Lennon, until all that mess with Yoko and Paul anyway.

Jasper puts his phone away. He watches me for a few minutes as I stare at Alice’s gift before stowing it safely in my bag. 

“How long has she been bulimic?” His long legs are taking up the leg room of the three seats beside us, so I guess it’s lucky that it’s not yet ten in the morning and this car is nearly empty. 

“You don’t pull any punches, do you?”

He does that eyebrow thing his brother does so well, but I swear it’s the opposite eyebrow. “Neither do you.”

I blow out a breath. “I don’t know if I should tell you this stuff. It’s hers. Maybe she doesn’t want you to know.”

“I caught her red-handed last night after dessert in the employee bathroom.” He pops his neck, the picture of the man with the upper hand. “She said the fish didn’t sit well with her.”

“Maybe it didn’t.”

“Bullshit.”

“Why don’t you ask her then?”

He pauses, and I can see him regrouping. Go ahead. I have secrets to keep, and miles to go before I sleep. 

“I plan to, when she trusts me more. But, Bella, I’m going to be a doctor. If she’s sick, and she’s not getting help–”

“You’ll what? Report her to someone? Her mother is not an idiot. Her agency does not care. She doesn’t need a doctor, Mr. Cullen. She needs a boyfriend. Stability. Love.”

He interrupts. “Therapy?”

“Been there, quit that.”

He pulls at his light hair, twisting the waves at his temples almost into horns. “Why does she do this to herself? She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen but she’d look better if she gained twenty pounds. Don’t you fucking dare tell her I said that.”

“Well, she won’t. Twenty pounds would be the end of her contract. You don’t get it. She doesn’t need to barf to hold that weight. She doesn’t need to.”

“She wants to?”

“Ask. her. yourself.”

He leans forward, his knees knocking mine. Get out of my bubble, motherfucker. 

“My brother likes you.”

I am giving him the bitch face, lips set like stone, and I know it. “Is the game we’re gonna play? Hos over bros, man. She’s blood to me.”

He ignores me. His fingers are on my knee, over my jeans. “He likes you. He attracted to you, and he’s intrigued by how you run your mouth. But he is in a relationship with a solid, sensible girl. She is dependable, Bella. They go way back, all the way to high school. She’s not as pretty as you, but she’s pretty enough. She’s not ambitious. She doesn’t make people look at her. She’s not going anywhere and that’s the point. She’s good enough. Do you know what it means to be up against someone like that, Bella? Someone stable?”

I cannot form words. I’m going to throw up, right here in this stupid train car that smells like Doritos and weed.

“Yes,” I say, and I spit the words at him, because I want him to know. I want someone besides Alice to know. “Yes, I know. I know exactly what that’s like.”

I bite my lip and when I taste blood, I make myself stop. 

I know what this game is like, and I know exactly how it ends. 


	10. Sapphire and Tonic

The Friday lunch rush is killing me. I got up too early for this shit. I am going at a dead run, with Lauren on the other end of the bar doing the same, when Esme darts in next to me and grabs the soda gun out of my hand. She yanks the ticker tape up and waves it at me. 

“You get these beers. I’ll get the pops.”

I don’t know whether she’s pissed or being helpful, and I don’t have time to worry about it right now. I take off, ticket in hand, set three pitchers to pour at the taps, and run to retrieve some special foreign bottles from the cooler midway up the bar. 

He appears out of the crowd like Moses parting the red sea. He sticks out, being that tall, and people move out of his way because six foot five? It intimidates people without him trying. He’s tan from the summer sun, and he’s wearing a white button-down with his jeans. Heads turn because he is what he is. He is what he is and we are who we are. People don’t change. Right, Estella?

“Sapphire and tonic,” he says, sliding a twenty across the bar in my direction. “Keep the change.” 

“What the fuck?” 

He slides onto a stool that has magically emptied for him. There weren’t any stools open a second ago. This bar is wall-to-wall assholes and elbows.

“I’d like my drink, please.”

“I’d like you to go fuck yourself.”

He smirks. Those blue eyes follow me, and I can feel my hands shaking. The stupid beer bottles are clanking against each other. I hate that he does this to me. I hate that he knows he does. His dimples appear. 

“Please, Bella, would you get me a drink?” I don’t say a word. He cocks his head a bit, studying me. “You look so good. And the anger?” He tents his fingers in front of him, long digits, and I look at his hand, and yes, it’s there. “It’s so much hotter.”

The fingers of my left hand curl on the bar in front of him. I have never wanted to commit murder so desperately, excepting that time crazy ass Vicki redecorated my studio with a case of paint from the clearance section at AutoZone. I lean down so we’re more level and speak through clenched teeth. “You sonofabitch. Ah oughtta put rat pisonun’ in your glass.” All my words run together. It’s a wonder I’m not speaking in tongues. 

“Bella!” Esme is still down at my well. She jerks her soft blonde bob in the direction of the wall. “The taps!”

Fuck. Shit. Damn. I grab the twenty-dollar bill and hurl myself toward the taps, flipping them off, and then setting up the pitchers and the bottles in the server area to be hustled to tables. Bree and Alan and even Juan Carlos, the dishwasher who is trying to balance a giant crate of dirty bar glasses on one shoulder, give me dirty looks. Fuck you, too. All of you. You don’t know what this piece of shit put me through.

I turn to another guy, older, who is waiting across from Esme with an expression that would make Alice’s nightmare of a baby cousin Shelly look saintly. “What can I get ya?”

He asks for Chivas on the rocks, light on the ice, heavy on the Chivas, and Tyler, seated next to him, breaks from his beloved hot ham and cheese to ask rather politely for another Bud. Tyler heard me just now, even over this din. I know he did because there is sympathy in his dark eyes, and something that looks frighteningly like pity. Worse, I think Esme heard me. She heard me curse out a customer. I am so fucking fired.

He gets his Chivas, no tip, awesome, and Tyler gets his Bud, and two college kids in those free tee-shirts the credit card companies used to hand out at freshman orientation get a pitcher of Goose while James sits, watching me. The smile never leaves his face.

Seeing that he isn’t going to leave, I finally make his Bombay and Tonic and slide it down the smooth black gloss of the bar from nearly two feet away. To my chagrin, it doesn’t fall over and soak him, and worse, I’m not carrying any arsenic with which to have laced it. 

He sips. I take a flurry of orders from the ticker tape, and make, make, make pitchers and pints for the servers for a solid fifteen minutes while Lauren runs the bar. 

“Refill?” she says, touching the napkin beside him. 

“From her,” he says, and oh, the killer charm of those eyes and those lips and those teeth, like Jack the Ripper before he rips. She looks kind of dazed and stops a second, shaking her head, and calling over her shoulder at me, “Sapphire and tonic, Bella!”

This time I slap the drink in front of him at my first free minute, along with his exact change out of the twenty for two drinks. “Drink this and go. Please.”

“Now, now, Isabella. Temper, temper.” He pushes the money back toward me. “You should take my money. I know you need it. And I don’t want to go. I want to talk to you.” He is a snake oil salesman. “About a truce.”

My hands are on my hips automatically. “It’s not your money, James. It’s hers. And are you crazy? Don’t answer that. I hear it rubs off on the spouses. You live with Blanche DuBois, pretty soon you’re gonna be screamin’ in the streets. You know, like when she catches your sorry ass cheating – again – and kicks you to the curb.” 

He is unshakable. I hate that about him. He bites his lime and hoists his glass. “A truce. For your sake and mine. I miss you and I want us to be friends. I didn’t want it to end the way it did–” He holds up a hand to silence me when I start to pop off again. “I didn’t. I didn’t know what she was going to do. And anyway, it would work out for you. I can get your money, Bella. You deserve that money for what she did.”

“You cannot buy your way out of this and neither can she. Have her call Dad’s lawyer if she wants to pay.”

“You know she’ll never do that. I can get it for you, and then it goes away. We keep it all quiet, and she’s happy, and we’re happy. You see?”

I hate him so much. I didn’t know how deeply I could hate, how it can well up inside you and poison your blood, taint your soul, pull you down into the depths of a riotous madness, not until these two, I didn’t. Mostly him, though. Mostly him. 

“The only thing I want to see is your back walking out of my fucking bar,” I say, leaning so close I can smell evergreen and mint on his skin. I lower my voice to a near whisper. “And you just better pray to whatever devil you worship that I don’t plant a prep knife where your backbone used to be on the way out, asshole. Are we clear?”

I pick up my bar towel and move away a few steps. “Have a great day!” I say, bright and breezy, so Esme and Tyler can hear and see me being polite. 

James just watches. He never misses anything. “I’ll be back soon,” he says. “I so enjoy your company, Bella.” 

I manage not to flip him off as I grab the empty ice buckets and stomp toward Frank in the back. 

**

I resurface a few minutes later with the ice buckets clacking in time to my own gnashing teeth. Blissfully, it seems James took my very liberal hint and hauled ass out of here.He seems to have taken most of the lunch rush with him. 

Tyler closes his tab without his usual smart remarks. “You work tonight?” he says, laying a fiver out for me. 

“Yeah,” I say, pocketing the better-than-usual tip. “I’m picking up a shot girl shift later.”

He nods and drops another five on the bar. “Buy yourself a drink when you get off, New Girl. You could use one.”

I’m dumbstruck. He just nods at me and wanders out with Red Bandana, Blue Bandana at his heels like the Crabbe and Goyle of the near South Side.

Esme is facing cash in the register while Lauren watches her from a wash sink overflowing with dirty pitchers. I hoist a bucket and start filling the well. 

“Bella?” I declare, even her voice sounds like Princess Diana. She’s the People’s Witchess. 

“What?” If she’s gonna fire me, I’m going to cut with the niceties. I will not apologize for what just happened, not even for a job. 

“What do you do when you aren’t at work? For fun, I mean?” 

And this day just keeps getting weirder.

“I run.”

“Distance or sprints?” She faces cash like the best stripper I ever saw. She’s finished all the 50s, the 20s, and the 10s and is steadily flipping and flying through the fives without missing a lick.

“Distance. The farther the better. I, uh, I like to sort of leave the world behind.”

She nods, flip, flip, stack, fan, and clip back into the drawer. “You should try the Lake Forest area sometime. It’s very scenic. You’d like it.”

I reach under the bar for another giant pack of straws to refill my pitcher. “Right on.”

I’ve got the napkins refreshed, new pitchers of limes and oranges in place, a fresh cup of cherries, and a shiny new non-sticky bottle of grenadine restocked in my well before she speaks again. She shrugs one petite shoulder in the direction of James’s retreat as I pass her with a load of dirty mugs and cocktail glasses. 

“Who was that guy?”

“An ex.”

“Just an ex?”

I drop a handful of beer mugs into the wash sink and the hot soapy water slops over onto my shoes. She’s helped me today. What can I gain from lying? What does anybody ever really gain from lying? “The. Ex.”

“The ex, like–?”

“Ex fiancé.”

“But he’s married now?”

“Oh, yeah. Hitched to a solid gold ball and chain. Platinum. Makes the Duck Dynasty guys look like small-time crackers.” 

She whistles. “Ouch.” And then: “Did you love him?”

Again with the not lying thing, right? I harrumph. “As the day is long.”

She nods, looking thoughtful. “You still love him?”

I hesitate, and I’m aware, even as I do it, how it makes me look to her. “I think…I think I love the idea of him.”

She squints at me. “Not good enough.” She pours herself a Diet and takes a few steps toward me. “But you’ll get there, won’t you?” Her hand is on my arm, like maternal, and I just don’t know what to think of this whole day or anybody in this whole weirdass family.

“Yes. I will.”

She pats my arm, says, “Good girl,” and heads back toward the office with her cold drink.

You could knock me over with a feather because I think we just had a connection or something. Of course, it mighta been the sweat I’m covered in. I press a finger to my own forearm and watch my arm hair stick like flypaper. Yep. This girl’s going to need a hot shower or ten before shot shift later. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all still out there? I need to just switch this to Friday updates bc Thursdays are crazzzy lately.   
> Anyway, I love all y'all. Talk to me. Find me on Twitter under this same name and on FB under Tandy McCray.   
> Anyway, yeah. Hope you're all still breathing. Keep on keepin' on.


	11. Damned Skippy

I spent too much time getting ready tonight. I don't know what shot girls wear because I've never been big on shots. I knew I needed to look hot but I didn’t want to look like a whore. Now I'm in a blue dress that’s really short in front – something of Alice's that probably shows her cootchie – and long in back. It’s kind of a form-fitting mullet dress but it’s not as bad as it sounds. I worked on my hair after hurrying home for a shower and that took forever because its natural state is braided and/or stringy. I'm late, and the roadhouse entrance down below has a line so I walk around to the topside bar doors and have to show my ID even though I tell the thug at the door I work here.

Seth is coming out as I'm coming in, relieving the muscle-bound Latino guy who doesn't know me. "She's good," he says, "She’s good." He pulls me through the crush of bodies, his big spacer earrings swinging. You could throw pecans through those holes. And how is he here now? He looks so young. I thought he was a kid. 

I've never been at Cullen's this late. The crowd seems a live thing all its own, bodies undulating in barely-there light that will make it difficult to see who is who and whereto step and what not to step in, including piss and vomit probably. I think of the open heels I chose and mentally smack myself.

There's a crush of people right at the door, and I finally see that someone is set up here with a big metal tub, selling beers to drunken people like ice to Eskimos. Seth is between me and the line for it, but someone is shoving. He’s cursing them out and trying to shield me with his body as the big guy keeps backing us up toward the beer cart. Before I know it, I am ass to cold aluminum tub and a voice I could pick out blindfolded is saying, “Careful there. You’ll get that pretty dress all wet.” 

Blindfolded and wet – two concepts placed in too close a proximity to Edward for me to be able to form coherent speech. I spin around and smile for all I’m worth, while working with the flow of the crowd toward the big bar. “Oh, hey. Here I am and there you are, and my dress is already wet. What a night, right?” Oh, God. You know what this place needs? One of those floors that open up to a swimming pool so somebody can turn the key and it can swallow me and my bigass mouth right the fuck now. “Well, see ya!”

I push my way around the front section, dodging two fraternity boys in Kappa Delta Some Greek Shit shirts, and practically lunge into the safe anonymity of the crowd. I am not so fast that I fail to notice what he’s got tied low on his hips, underneath a black bar shirt and over his signature Levi’s. It’s that apron. My dress is definitely wet. 

And so is my thong. 

“Who was that?” I hear him ask Seth, sounding bewildered, but I don’t wait for our resident Ryan Seacrest, the tatted boy wonder, to clear up his confusion. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to embarrass myself further. Jesus Christ, he didn’t even recognize me! 

It takes me a solid ten minutes to get over to the server station. I’m running in these stupid heels down the hall, around the office, and into the kitchen. I skid to a stop in front of long metal trays full of Jell-O shots, all laid out in the salad area. 

Rosalie, dressed like Hugh Hefner’s wife, is helping Esme (who is not at all dressed like Hugh Hefner’s wife) wrap cellophane over the trays. “Bella!” she says, sliding a tray into Emmett’s waiting arms. “We were wondering if you’d flaked on us.”

“Me? No way. I don’t ever do that. I’m not really a flaker. I was running a little behind and then there was this big line out front…and Edward and stuff and… Why are you dressed like the happy hooker?” 

I clap a hand over my own mouth, because really? What is wrong with me tonight? Emmett starts laughing so hard he almost drops the tray. “Ain’t it great?” he says. “She a hottie, amiright or amiright?”

I take in Rosalie’s thigh high leather boots with the razor slim stiletto heel, her skin tight, bright white dress, and flat-ironed blonde hair. “You’re right,” I say. “You’re definitely right.”

“You’re looking lovely as well, Bella.” Esme is pouring fresh, hot Jell-O mix into little plastic dressing containers on another tray. “Are you ready to make some money?”

What do you know? She’s human again. I wonder if it’s all the business we’ve had today? Maybe raking in cash hand over fist makes her giddy? It would me. I’m ready for it. Lead the way. 

“Oh, God, yes. What do I do?”

She hands me a small tray full of cold shots. “Follow Rosalie’s lead to get the hang of it, and then you two can split up. One of you work topside and the other roadhouse, and then you can switch.” 

I nod. “Sounds easy.”

“Oh, and if you have any issues like you had earlier today, call for Seth or one of the doormen. There are always two of them working the crowd upstairs and down so they should be able to spot you if you’re in trouble.”

Emmett kind of bristles, his wide knuckles whitening against the huge tray he holds. “What kind of trouble? What happened today?”

Fucking Esme and her big fucking mouth. I glare at her. I can’t help it. “Nothing. I just had a little blast from the past I wasn’t expecting, that’s all.”

Esme is stirring blue and red Jell-O together to make purple. Her fingers are stained but her French manicure is magnificent as always. She doesn’t even bother to look up from her work. “Her ex fiancé paid us a little visit. I got the impression he was not an invited guest.”

“I tend not to invite assholes to hang out with me at work.” She won’t even look up to see my bitchface. It’s annoying. It’s like she doesn’t care at all that she’s airing my dirty laundry in front of half her family. I may have overestimated with that human thing. “But that’s so not the point. It wasn’t trouble. I can handle him. I don’t know how he knew where I worked, but whatever. It’s a free country. He can get a drink if he pleases.”

“Not in our bar, he can’t. Not if he’s being a dick.” Emmett points to a sign beside the swinging kitchen doors to the roadhouse that I never noticed before. It appears to be a list of banned customers, apparently added on to at will, because the names are in different hands and different colors of ink. 

“I told you, I had it. It’s not a big deal,” I say, hoping it will sink into their big, nosey skulls. 

Rosalie is pulling her phone from a little silver bag on a string and handing it over to me. “I know how he found you. You didn’t tell us your best friend was famous. Oh, and you totally forgot to mention Jasper is banging her.” 

“Language, Rosalie.” Esme loads Emmett up with another tray and tows him toward the walk-in cooler, one hand on her designer jeans-clad hip. “Let’s put these away.”

Rosalie has TMZ pulled up. There’s a link to a slideshow of us at the airport this morning along with an article that makes me queasy just reading it. 

**_ Model Caught Canoodling with College Boy _ **

_ Alice Brandon, the 24-year-old Georgian hottie, seems to have broken her celibacy streak. Our sources found her swapping serious spit with a blond Adonis in O’Hare just hours ago. The risqué photos, taken in the public area outside the Delta security line, show Ralph Lauren’s favored all-American girl getting hot and heavy with the cutey, whom we have identified as Loyola University student Jasper Cullen, 21. Cullen’s family owns an empire of real estate as well as several restaurants in the Chicago area, including an upscale eatery on the Magnificent Mile and a bar and grill on the city’s south side. _

_ Brandon’s long-time bestie/beard, Isabella Swan, joined the pair for an impromptu selfie session after the couple came up for air. Swan and Cullen left the airport together after Brandon boarded a flight to Atlanta. Sources say Brandon will soon be starring in a new fragrance campaign for Lancôme Paris. Her rep has yet to respond to calls for comment. _

I sigh. “Those dickheads work fast. I guess this explains how James found me.” I pass the phone back. “Fucking Jasper couldn’t keep his tongue in his own damned mouth.”

“Yeah. She totally looked offended by it.” Rosalie is looking at me. “That’s some dress, by the way. You’re smoking.”

My fingers pluck at the clingy fabric where it bunches up around my stomach. “Yeah, well. It’s Alice’s so it’s too small but it was the best I could do.”

She grins. “Smaller is better for shots. Trust me, you’re gonna be a hit.” She sticks the phone back down into the bag. “Which is great because then I can quit doing it.”

“Why do you do it?”

Her eyes roll toward the make line, where Emmett and Esme have moved on to slapping hundreds of hot dogs into buns. “She likes the money, and he likes the clothes. It’s how I started here. Esme promoted me pretty quickly but Emmett kind of likes showing me off, I guess.” 

I listen to Emmett’s braying laugh and find it tough to hold back a smile. “Emmett, show off? I don’t believe it.”

She’s laughing as she fishes a wad of cash out of her shiny bag and hands it to me. “Here’s your bankroll, for change. You owe Esme this fifty bucks at the end of the night, plus a dollar fifty per shot. Everything over that, you keep.”

“Cool. Let’s hope it’s a lot.” I suddenly realize I have nowhere to stash the cash, other than my bra. “Uh, where do I put this?”

“You didn’t bring a purse?” I shake my head. I’ve got my ID and my train card in my bra. “Hang on.” She disappears toward the office and comes back with one of those velvet pouches the Crown Royal bottles come in. “Here. This should work. You ready?” 

Seth comes through the kitchen, talking into his radio. “I’m coming up to the main bar. Edward needs a case of Rolling Rock and two more cases of Bud Light. I need three more bottles of well vodka for the service bar, too.” 

She sees where my attention has gone and fixes her big blue eyes on me. “I said, are you ready?” 

I grab my tray and slip the braided loops of the Crown bag over my wrist. 

“You’re damned skippy, I am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, it's all prewritten. I just suck.  
> And so does trying to WFH FT while four kids are home schooling.  
> Happy Mother's Day to all of you who celebrate! Enjoy this day. It may be the only peaceful one you get if you're like me.


	12. Firecracker

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll get to review replies soon. I appreciate everyone who drops a note or a kudo!

I’ve gotten three drink offers, four ‘oops, it’s really crowded in here’ body gropes, and a marriage proposal from a girl out for her twenty-first birthday by the time it’s my turn to head to topside bar. I’ve also made a shit ton of money and sold out my shot tray twice. I pass Rosalie on the stairs on the way up. 

“They keep taking my change!” I have to shout over the classic rock music and the drunks in the crowd. “How do I get more?” 

“Topside bar can give you change,” she says, hollering over the din. “But if they’re too busy, go ask Edward. He’s got a ton of cash up there.” 

Well, I declare. 

I don’t have as much time to think about how best to approach him as I’d like, because a table full of thick-necked jocks waves the two of us down and buys out both our trays. They also try really hard to convince us that the proper way to thank them for their generosity would be for us to kiss each other, with tongue, while they make a little video for Instagram. Yeah, no. I haven’t had a single thing to drink yet, and Rosalie isn’t going to be the first almost-member of the Cullen family I get to feel up. That’s not happening. No, siree, Bob. 

“Enjoy, guys!” Rosalie snatches my tray and makes toward the swinging kitchen doors. “Here.” She pushes her little purse at me. “You go get us both more change and I’ll get more shots from Erik and meet you up front.” 

She’s gone, her sheet of blonde hair swinging behind her, and I am left with my own nerves and a long walk to the front of Cullen’s. 

I can see him, a glimpse here and there, as I fight my way through the madness. He’s so tall and whenever he isn’t slinging beers like pancakes at a fire department fundraiser, he drapes his long arm over the top of the line of booths behind him. 

“Where you going, baby? You want a drink?” 

The man at the high-top table next to me is closer to Emmett’s age than mine. He’s holding court with a group of younger guys and a few girls. I’m boxed in. The crowd has stopped cold here, gridlocked by the press of more bodies than I would’ve believed could possibly fit into this section of tables and booths. 

“I’m working.” I shake my head and hold up the two bags. “Just getting change, but thanks anyway, man.” 

“You don’t look like you’re working.” His eyes, dark and deep set, overshadowed by a prominent forehead and a hawkish nose, follow a line from my throat to my hips. “Come have a drink with us, sweetheart. Let’s get acquainted.” 

Several of the younger guys at his table stand and move forward, and I just cannot with this crap. Really? We’re gonna play this way? 

“I said no thanks.” I tap a guy behind me on the shoulder. “Hey, dude, can you move? I need to find a doorman to throw these pricks out.” The guy blinks at me from behind black-rimmed hipster glasses but nods. I’m under his arm and squeezing on through the crowd before the group of losers behind me can get out the cuss words they’re probably thinking. 

I’m so thankful when I finally make it to Edward that I forget he didn’t recognize me earlier. I shove my way through the circle of people around him buying beers, my fingers curling over the cold edges of the ice-filled tub on the table beside him. “Jesus, am I glad to see you. Is it like this every weekend? Because these people ain’t playing with a full deck.” 

“Give me two, Edward,” the guy I cut in front of says, and Edward, whose timid smile is such a contrast to the absolute gluttony of this place, obliges him. The guy, nearly as tall as his beer purveyor but thin and wiry, hands me a Rolling Rock. “Here, girl. Have a drink.” 

“What? No.” I try to push the beer back to him. “I’m working. I can’t drink. Why does everybody keep trying to buy me drinks?” 

“Maybe they want an excuse to talk to you.” Edward is selling, smooth and quick, taking rumpled bits of money and handing back faced cash and dripping bottles of beer. His plaid flannel is rolled up to mid arm and his forearms are covered in water. His fingers look pruny. 

“Well, that’s stupid. I don’t have time to talk. I gotta work.” 

Rolling Rock Guy eyes me, sipping his own beer. He seems to toggle between Edward and I, his feet shifting slowly. “You’re talking to Edward.” 

“What?” Oh, a wise guy. “I came to get change.” I produce the two bags. “And anyway, that’s different.” I roll my bare shoulder toward Edward. “He’s not interested in me. He didn’t even know who I was earlier.” 

Rolling Rock snorts. “Imagine that.” He ducks his head toward Edward. “Who is she, anyway?” 

“I’m the new bartender. And the shot girl.” I stretch out my hand. “Bella Swan. I’d let him introduce us but he never seems to remember my name around company.” 

“You don’t say?” Rolling Rock has freckles and ginger hair and a scraggly beard, a la Ron Weasley in Hermione’s dirty dreams. “I thought this guy was the picture of good manners.” 

“Apparently not.” 

Edward has probably sold half a case while we’ve been shooting the shit. He looks up from his latest sale and shakes his soaking wet hand in my direction. “Look at that, your dress is wet.” 

That water is cold. “What the hell?” 

He grins. “You said I didn’t have any manners.” 

“Oh, my God. You’re ornery.” Ahn-rey. 

“Sometimes.” One dark eyebrow is up and the pair of eyes below it are trained somewhere between my neck and my nipples, which are trying to wave at him from beneath my water-splattered dress. “What can I get you, ladies?” 

He sells a pack of sorority girls a bunch of Amstel Lights before turning back in my direction. Rolling Rock claps him on the shoulder and wanders off. “Good luck with this one, man. She’s a firecracker.” 

His lip turns up. “I’ve noticed.” 

I produce my cash. “The hell. You haven’t noticed anything to do with me that doesn’t involve ice or Diet Coke.” I shove a stack of twenties at him. “Could I get some change, please? Rosalie said to get it from you if the bar was full.” 

He reaches into his front pocket, under his apron, and stows the larger bills before beginning to cut ones and fives out of another stack from his apron pocket for me. “I know who you are, Bella. I just didn’t recognize you earlier. You look, um…” He stops. “Different. You look different without, without your uniform on.” 

“Yeah, well.” I draw closer to him, partially to hide his hands from the crowd around us while he flips through so much cash, and partly because he pulls me in. I need to be nearer. “Is this the part where you tell me I clean up pretty good?” 

He hands me back the first stack of ones and I trade him for Rosalie’s big bills. He starts counting. “You always look nice.” He’s still holding a stack of bills as he reaches up suddenly, running one cold finger, quick and startling, over my bones. “Such pretty clavicles.” 

“Oh.” There’s nothing but intimacy in that single breathy word on the air between us. We are charged and ready. He pulls his finger back, and looks long, right into me, and I am standing there, back to the entrance, my bare legs nearly against his jean and white apron-covered thighs. “Oh, hey. Hi, there.” I’m a wreck. “I’m, uh…” I sigh. “I’m a mess.” I lean forward and I drop my forehead against his bicep. He’s laughing. I look up at him and he is smiling, and I…what do I do? “This isn’t funny. I’m me and you’re, you’re–” 

His eyes are shining. He looks happier than I’ve ever seen him. “I’m here all night.” He hands me the last of the money. “You’ll be back around to talk, right? I mean, you’ll need a break.” He points to the corner of the table the beer cart doesn’t cover. “I’ll save you a seat.” 

“Now that sounds like a plan.” 

“What kind of plan?” 

I turn, lifting my head off Edward’s side, to find Rosalie coming in the topside doors with two big platters of Jell-O shots in her arms. Her Cheshire grin is completely ruined for me by the scowl on the face of the man pushing through behind her. 

“I thought you were working?” He’s pissed. 

I step out of the warm circle of Edward and reach for a platter. “Well, hello to you, too, Jake.” 

** 

Jake came to meet the creep at the high-top table. He says he’s a friend but I know better. He’s a manufacturer and whatever it is he’s got, Jake’s buying. The thing about Jake is that he makes a damned fine living, but you wouldn’t call it honest unless you want to believe that every person he sees has fibromyalgia or one of those diseases with a bunch of awful symptoms nobody can see. 

He’s bought another full tray off me and passed it around to all the goons. He’s trying to sweet talk me into coming to see him and the boys tonight. “C,mon, babe. I got some good stuff. We can relax, unwind.” 

His beefy hands run up my bare arms while the Cro Magnon king pin looks on. I shake him off and turn so Mr. Hyde can’t see me giving him what for. “No. I gotta work, and I don’t want any more of your stuff, and I sure as hell don’t want to hang out with that guy.” 

His smile is so bright in here, it’s almost eerie. His teeth kind of glow in his dark face, and it reminds me of too many nights with The Wall on repeat and a black light and his good stuff, his fine, fine ass and his fine ass rock. I am not an addict; I never was. I don’t intend to ever be. 

“Fine, fine. Davionne is harmless, sweetheart. We just gotta a little business to do and I’ll send him on his way. It can just be me and you, if you want. I’ll even send the guys away.” 

Big man on campus, this one. He was running drugs to Atlanta when I met him, but I didn’t know. Drug dealers don’t announce these things when they’re picking up chicks in college bars. It would kill their game. “Hi! I’m Jake and I’m totally supplying that guy in your art history class the bad rock that’s going to kill him before the end of the year. Wanna fuck?” 

Yeah, no. 

I look up to the front of the house, and even above “Build me up, Buttercup, don’t break my heart!” I can see Edward. He is working really hard up there, I know. Seth is next to him with the cart again refilling the tub with beer. 

This mess doesn’t belong here. It feels wrong, like I am betraying him somehow. Of course that’s stupid because he’s got a reliable, pretty-enough girlfriend that he’s probably been with for close to a decade. 

As though he can feel me watching him, he turns and looks out into the crowd. There’s a girl in my way for a minute, one of those blondes with the real tight asses, trying to shake her little white groove thang and sing this karaoke wannabe shit song. When she drops into the table next to us, Edward’s gaze warms me. He smiles for a second but Jake is rubbing my arm again and the smile is gone, and he’s turned away and talking to Seth. Moments later, Jake is still saying words I haven’t heard at all, and Edward is clapping Seth on the back and ducking out the topside doors into the balmy night. 

My hand catches Jake’s and I squeeze, because listen to me. Please, just listen. “Listen, I need to go refill my tray and make a round. Get this asshole,” I jerk my head toward Davionne, “out of here, okay? Act like you’ve got some raisin.’ You don’t bring your goddamn drug shit into my work, you hear me? You don’t. I don’t want to see it.” 

He blinks at me, and his fingers go to his pockets and he’s handing me a wad of stuff, more cash. I try to push it back. 

“No. I don’t want your money, Jake.” 

He touches my hair, and we’re on the same level, eye-to-eye with me in these stupid heels. It’s all wrong. Wrong hands, smooth not rough. Wrong eyes, brown not green. Wrong smell, like cigarettes and weed instead of pizza dough and spices and the outdoors. Wrong everything. 

“Take it,” he says. “I know you need it, girl. Take it. I’ll get rid of him and I’ll wait here for your shift to be over. We can just talk, okay?” 

“I…I gotta go.” 

“I’ll be here. I’ll wait.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's talk. I'm on twitter under the same name and on FB as Tandy McCray. I also have a short story for sale on amazon kindle as Tandy McCray, if you're looking for a way to cool off as the hot weather moves in. It's set in snowy Pennsylvania and involves a veteran and a woman looking to be saved. xo


	13. Sluterella

When I get to the kitchen, Erik takes my tray and heads off to the office to add the next round to his tallies and get me yet more change. Edward is back by his make tables, eating a hot dog. I go that way, because I can’t go anywhere else. 

“Your partner deserted you.” His hot dog is covered in nacho cheese sauce from the pump we use for nachos. I really don’t know how to feel about that. He flexes his fingers on the non-hot dog holding hand and smiles. There are beads of sweat all over his forehead so I was right. He has been running hell for leather up there. 

“She did?” I pull at my hair, lifting it off my neck because Jesus, it is hotter than a whore in church up in here, or you know, a whore in a bar, because hello. Here I stand, with Edward. “Did she take Princess Esme and Emmett the Great with her?” 

His laughter soothes. I close my eyes for a second and let it hold me in, hold me together, the way I know he could if we could both let ourselves see how. There’s something here, out beyond the horizon of what we know and where we’ve come from and what we’d leave behind. I don’t know how you find it, though, without faith, and mine is shot six ways to Sunday. 

His words call me back like the refrain on one of Grandma’s Baptist hymns, low and slow and repeating. “Princess Esme and Emmett the Great? That’s pretty awesome. And pretty accurate, actually. What do you call Rosalie?” He steals another hot dog from the line and holds it under the pump. His forearm flexes when the gooey nacho cheese sauce gets pushed out onto the hot dog and why is that making me think about him stroking his cock and coming? Oh, my God, Bella, you are a sick, sick girl.

“Rosalie?” He’s eating again. Why are all the Cullens so distracting when they eat?

“Hmm? The carpet bagger.” 

“What?”

“It’s a better fit than uptight Yankee bitch. She’s not a bitch, at least not to me. Yet.”

“But carpet bagger?” He’s got nacho cheese sauce on his lip. I’m straightening up. It’s like my tits have a mind of their own. They want to stand up straight and get closer to him. 

I shrug. “Well, she’s got a lot of big, expensive bags.”

“Bags and shoes. Emmett says she took his closet for shoes and makes him hang his stuff under the stairwell.” He takes a big swig of Diet Coke. His hands keep clenching. He looks so nervous. The skin over his scuffed knuckles and against his high cheekbones is very white under these fluorescent lights. Nerves? I can’t believe that, though. He has no reason to be nervous around me. 

“She sounds like Alice.” I twirl my hair into a knot against my neck and leave it. He eyes my shoulders. I see him doing it, and I just stand back and let him look because those green eyes of his won’t meet mine, hardly ever, and if he wants to look at my body, I’ll take what I can get. Girls like me, we live off the scraps the good men of the world throw us. We take the bones and make a meal, and lay down to wait for the next bit of decency that comes our way. 

He turns. His shoulders are stiffer than a moment ago, and that blood vessel up the side of his neck and the one in that tall, sculpted forehead, they seem to throb as he swallows. His voice scratches against the poor lighting and the relative quiet of this place that feels like a tomb in the middle of the chaos we can hear out there, waiting. “You should eat,” he says. “Hot dog?”

“Oh, thanks, but no. I don’t really care for them.”

His lips pull to the left. Sometimes he’s almost boyish. It’s a fine line between impish and impeccable, but he straddles it as well as I bet he straddles anything. Me. Straddle me.

He ignores me, and that arm is flexing again as he leans on the cheese pump and coats The Thing, as Alice calls Those Things, with a solid gold ribbon of yellow dye and hydrogenated motor oil or something. I mean, there are probably more chemicals in that hot dog and cheese concoction than a Kardashian’s face. 

It looks delicious.

He teases me with it, holding it out and pulling it back. “C’mon. It’ll change your life, I promise. Best thing in the world next to…yeah, almost anything.”

Sex? Fucking A. 

I waggle my fingers. “Give it here.”

The first bite, as he watches me while sipping his Diet, proves his point. It is amazing. Hot and gooey and cheesy and just ridiculously, deliciously bad for me. I will eat my damned hot dog and I will like it. It’s all I’ve got. 

“Oh, my God.” I glare at him while licking cheese off my fingers. “Oh, my Gawd. Why did you do this to me?” Why does he do this to me? 

He ducks his head and there’s a little smile, a little piece of perfect, and for just a moment, a flash of his eyes meeting mine. 

While I eat, he starts telling me about how Carlisle is usually here to pass out the hot dogs at midnight, because people like it when Mr. Cullen shows up for that part. 

“He’s at home tonight, though, which is why Emmett and Esme came instead. We’ll have some doormen pass them out later. Dad’s got a thing tomorrow up town, a food festival thing on the Mile.”

I’m talking around the hot dog because it’s so good I’m not stopping just to talk. I hold my hand in front of my mouth and mumble behind my fingers. “Aren’t you supposed to be up town tonight?” 

“Me? No. I only work during the day up town on Fridays. I always do Thursday, Friday, Saturday night beer cart shifts here.”

Oh. He didn’t come back just for me then. 

He must see it on my face, the disappointment, because he rushes to say, “But they’re usually not quite so, um, interesting.” He’s blushing again. I think he’s my new favorite everything – color, flavor, noun, verb. He’s both a person and an act, this one. He is Edwarding me all over this bar, just by being here. 

“You work a lot.”

“I do.”

“Why?” I stick the last bite in my mouth and I’m oh, so sorry, to have it gone.

He’s looking at the list of banned people behind my head, just over my left shoulder. “To make money, I guess. I like to work, be busy. It fills up the time.” 

I don’t understand because he obviously doesn’t have to work this much. Why wouldn’t he want to spend more time with her instead of in here? 

I find a napkin next to the silverware bins and wipe my hands. “What else do you do? When you’re not in here, I mean?”

His eyes slide to center and he’s looking at my throat, but his shoulders relax and he leans toward me just a little. Come to me, big boy. Come right on over. 

He digs his phone out of his back pocket and swipes it. He lays it on the make table, and I lean forward to look at the wallpaper. 

It’s not her. It’s a boat. 

“I sail,” he says and he’s almost springy, and this is the boy, the young, the enthusiasm and love he ought to feel for her. But it’s a fucking boat. 

My fingers touch the phone. “She’s a beaut.”

He’s almost glowing, and his color is better now, so I guess the break was just the thing. “Do you boat?”

I shake my head, hard. “No. No, I, uh…I kinda almost drowned once as a kid. Me and water, we don’t really get along. Unless it’s a pool or something.” 

“That’s a shame. It’s the best.”

I laugh. “Better than that cheese sauce?”

“Oh, yeah.” 

“You’re absolutely killing it tonight, sweetheart.” 

Our heads both jerk up as Erik comes down the stairs and into the kitchen with another full tray of shots. Edward’s hand shoots out and pockets his phone. 

I take the tray out of Erik’s waiting hands and smile, smile, smile. “Yeah, well, it’s New Girl-itis. It’ll wear off by next week.”

Erik laughs but Edward, he’s still in there somewhere, lost in the waves or something. He surprises me when he shakes his head and shows me the dimples. “Not likely.”

I’m dying. I wonder if it’s true what they say about how your pupils actually expand when looking at something you really want, like a bigass cupcake or an Adam Driver picture. If it is, then I’m channeling Dracula right now because my eyes have to be absolutely black with need. 

Erik swings the Royal Crown bag in front of my face. “Get back out there and sell it, sister.”

So much for our moment. I glare at the dome of his receding hairline and turn to push out of the swinging roadhouse doors. “Right on.” 

Edward stops me with the heat of his hand encircling my raised wrist on the platter. It takes every bit of will power in me not to drop the entire tray all over him. 

“I think I need one of those.” He plucks a grape shot off my tray and hands me a five. Before I can recover, he’s pulled his straw out of his mouth and used it to loosen the shot from the dressing container. His tongue dips under the Jell-O and pulls the sweet liquor into his mouth in one fluid motion. Slack jawed isn’t a good look but I can’t for the life of me fight it right now. That is talent, right there.

“I’ll see you out there,” he says. 

“Yeah, okay.” My voice sounds like a frog's.

I start forward again as Erik wanders back toward the office, his keys in hand.

“Hey, Bella?” 

Sweet Jesus. Yes. The answer to every question from him is yes. I turn. “Hmm?”

He’s playing with the little plastic dressing cup. “What do you call me?”

I blink, and I try to think of something else, anything else, but I am a truth teller to the last, a sayer of those things no one else wants to say or believe or hear. 

“Wonderful,” I say, on a deep breath. “I call you wonderful.” 

I don’t wait because I know he won’t look at me anyway and the reaction I’d need to see would be in those Fort Knox eyes, locked tightly away from me. 

I hear his sharp intake of breath and I am gone, running back out into the lion’s den in my borrowed dress and Sluterella heels, leaving the silver doors swinging behind me. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lapse. I have no excuse because it's all written, other than the fact that I'm working FT from home with four kids. And I am toward the end of a complicated production schedule for a twice annual magazine.  
> Anyway, our whole world is burning. It's a total shit show here in the States. If you're a POC, just know that I support you and I'm talking to my kids, who have lots of questions, and trying to model good ally behavior. Things have to change. They just have to.  
> Stay safe out there and healthy, too, y'all.


	14. Promises, promises

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would've posted this earlier, but I started reading ahead to work on revisions as needed, and ended up reading way ahead, tinkering, and wasting too much time to get this up. I know this is dumb. I wrote the thing. I know what happens. *shrugs* But sometimes a gal just gets caught up in words.

True to his word, the goons are gone. Jacob sits at the topside bar alone, downing Jager and smoking a Juul. It’s so cosmopolitan and utterly lame. “What time do you get off?” he says as I swing by, selling two strawberry shots to a pretty blonde girl and her slightly less gorgeous brunette sidekick.

I give him the smartass smile, my eyes over his wide head, watching Edward sling beers to co-eds and construction workers. “At this rate? A quarter past never.” This is clearly the wrong thing to say because there is hope there in ol’ Jakey’s eyes, lit by the bluish-green glow of his cig. Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Diva are eying him like he’s Chris Hemsworth’s half black twin. I want to hand him off to them, all magnanimous and cool, but I’m over it. I count out their change. “When it slows down or I run out, I guess. Listen, Jacob, go home. I’m gonna be beat when I get outta here, and I’m not in the mood.” 

“Just have a drink with me when you finish up. You’ve been working so hard. You need to wind down.” He’s fingering a shot glass and that thick gold watch he wears catches the neon Coors Light glow. The Kardashians shift a little to the right, close enough to listen without appearing to hear. Sometimes I feel badly for Jake. He’s a walking advertisement for a certain lifestyle, and it tends to attract girls that will end up being quietly escorted out of his rooms the next day. Then again, he’s the one who buys the shit, so what do I know?

“I don’t think so.”

He reaches up and tucks a stray hair behind my ear. I’m sweating. It’s hotter than a whore in church up in here with all these people, but it’s Edward, too. My heart’s still flying, working overtime on its path to righteous destruction. 

“Okay, Bells. Mind if I hang out, though? I don’t feel like going home just yet.” He eyeballs the blonde and her blowout and tits in that sequin tank. “Seems like a nice enough place you’ve got here.”

I shrug. “Free country, Jake.” There’s a group of older guys with shaggy beards trying to get my attention, and they don’t look like the Jell-O shot types, so this will probably not be a fun sale, but I drift that direction anyway. Bring on the money, yo. 

Jake’s voice trails after me even as Dumb and Diva swoop in. “Nothing’s free, baby Bel. Nothing, nowhere, no one.”

**

“So how long have you been sailing?” 

I have to shout, and he’s still flipping cash and handing out beers, so our conversation has pretty much amounted to “Hey, ya,” and “Hi, again!” shouted in passing thus far, but I am determined. I’m spending so much time on the topside and zipping through the roadhouse that I might also be fired if Erik gets his face out of Shayna Washington’s cleavage any time soon. 

I don’t think he will, though. The last time I went down for a new tray he was leading her through the kitchen and talking about “becoming a partner in the Cullen family business,” which is bullshit. Shayna’s one of our best servers on day shift. I hope if she wants to sleep her way to the top she at least tries to convert Leah because the Cullen boys are spoken for and Erik is just not in her league.

Rolling Rock wanders by about the time I plop my ass on the corner of the table Edward reserved for me before I went all stupid and bared my soul. He answers my question because Edward is busy passing out beers two-fisted. “Since forever. Boy here is a water dawg, you know?”

Rolling Rock is past middlin’ on the fair to middlin’ stage of hotness. The fact that he registers with me at all with Edward four feet away is a testament to the power of redheaded men. I do love a ginger. What? Outlander is amazing, okay? I have no regrets.

“Yeah? Y’all known each other a long time?” A guy in leather flip flops pushes his way between me and Edward, and points at both of us with the hand he isn’t using to hold up his drunk girlfriend. “I’ll have one of those–” (a Budweiser) “and one of those–” (a Jell-O shot) “for her.” 

I hand him the shot and Edward gives him the beer, but he shoves the cash at Edward before walking away. “Hey!” This isn’t how it works. “What about my money, man?”

Edward peels off some wet bills and passes them over. Our fingers don’t touch. I want them to, really badly. Is it so much to ask for, a little skin-to-skin contact? What if I beg? I’m not above begging, not with him. 

“He paid me for both of them. Here.”

I take the rumpled ones, grumbling. “Why do they always pay the guy? And what do we look like, a team? You’re kinda tall to pass for Rosalie but I bet you’d look sexy as fuck in a mini.”

Rolling Rock laughs but it’s Edward’s face I watch. The dimple is deep, and he’s got that slight cleft in his chin. Both of them are darkened with heavy shadow right now, and when he laughs it’s all I can do not to stand up and offer him my ass cheeks as a thank you. Thank you, sir, because really a smile from him is worth the best prize in my tight little Cracker Jack box.

He’s still grinning. “I’ve been sailing since I was eight. I’ve known Jason two years. Bar years are like dog years, so yeah, you might say a long time.” 

“Eight? Fucking hell. Haven’t you ever heard of Legos?”

He’s eyeing me, and his mouth is working over a black straw. For just a second, the tip of a rosy hued tongue peeks out from behind his lower lip. “Such pretty talk.”

I’m never going to get out of this place with a pair of dry underwear. Never. 

“Pretty mouth, too.” 

Edward’s head snaps around, and there’s a moment there, between them. Jason’s leering at me a little but it doesn’t feel skeevy because he’s too laid back for skeevy, but just the same when he quits looking at me and meets Edward’s glare, it’s a moment. I decide to cut and run, because that’s what I do and why mess with a winning formula?

Two sets of eyes follow my legs as I swing off the table edge. “I best go make some money. Save me a beer, Edward? I’m almost outta shots.” 

He nods, one arm back up on the wall behind him, straw clamped between lips I long to linger over and quiver under. “Whatever you want.” 

I can’t help myself around him and those arms and that dimple and those eyes. 

“Promises, promises.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I SWEAR I will get you another chapter up by Thursday or Friday, God willing and the creek don't rise.


	15. Bar Gravy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Saturday. That's close! And it's a big chapter.

Erik counts up what I owe and when I hand it over, he asks if I’ll be back tomorrow night. Honestly, I don’t know if I’m supposed to be, and I say as much. He says I should text Rosalie and ask. I don’t have her number, but Leah does, and she works tomorrow so I’ll ask her. 

He wants to know if Alice is really dating Jasper, and what she sees in him. Is it because he’s pre-med? He’s just a kid, you know? I don’t know is what I say but of course I do. He’s a Cullen, and all these men, they draw you in. There’s something about them that makes you trust and makes you lust and makes you feel. I don’t say this to him. I just shrug and smile and escape. The less time I spend around Erik the better. 

I stop back by the walk-in cooler and count what I didn’t hand over. I made $246. Oh, and fifty-two cents, because some joker in the roadhouse has a sense of humor and gave me a penny for my thoughts twice. 

All I can think about is Edward. It’s about one-thirty in the morning, and I don’t think he’ll shut down till after two, but I can go hang out with him now without feeling like I’m letting money go by. It’s so much money. I paid Bails’ pet deposit with Jake’s ridiculous tip earlier this week, so this money can go toward other necessities, like ramen noodles and Ivory soap, and I don’t know, the electric bill, because that one’s due before rent. 

I can’t get up front fast enough. I’m so grateful for this money and this chance and the smiles I got from Edward. It’s like everything is coming together, finally. Of course, this is when the rug usually gets pulled out from under me. I can’t help thinking it and I want to just not, but it’s there, that niggling reminder that he is hers, not mine, and this could all go south, and not the South I love, but right down into the bowels of Hades like where it went with James and Victoria. Lord alive, just once, just one fucking time, I want things to go my way. 

I duck out through the alley door across from Frank, and run up past the dumpsters to avoid the ridiculous crowd and Jake, who was still chatting up the Boobsey Twins when I went to cash out. Seth’s on door when I reach topside. He ushers me through with a sweep of a heavily tatted arm. He even holds the inner door open for me, and there is Edward leaning against the half wall beside the beer cart. Seth gives me a little shove. 

“Asshole. Seriously?” I can’t help my mouth. Meryl called it when I was still wandering around in jelly sandals, stealing Keeblers out of her Santa Claus cookie jar. It grew to be the biggest part about me, closely followed by this ass that Alice swears is Brazilian or African American or something other than skinny white girl from Nowheresville, Georgia. 

Seth flashes me some kind of finger sign and schlumps back toward the door, hollering over his shoulder, “Hey, Edward, I brought you this.” I teeter in my sticky heels and flip off Seth’s back. 

My feet make squelching noises I pray Edward can’t hear as I walk over and push myself up onto the corner of the beer cart table. My ass slides and I try not to think about what I am doing to Alice’s dress. I have a cat. She has clothes. Ruin her clothes and she will hurt you. Me. Oh, God. I’m wearing beer and sweat. She’s going to murder me if I don’t find a good dry cleaner. 

“Penny for your thoughts?” 

“Oh, no,” I say. “Some guy downstairs already tried that. I got two cents and hardly any tip. You need to raise the stakes, my friend.” 

He smirks and do I see an eye roll? I think I do. He’s selling beers to two boys in vintage (Target) Beatles tees, and they ask for three but push one back. “Naw, man. I ain’t getting your boy a beer till he shows. You know Landra’s gone keep his ass sewn up tonight.” 

They pay and drift into the crowd. Edward reaches over, long arm fully extended, and there are all these beautiful blue and green veins running up and down his forearm like patterns in sand at low tide. They shift as he pokes my bicep with the forgotten green bottle. “Beer for your thoughts?” 

“Now you’re talking.” I twist the cap and shake my hair off my neck as I take a long drink. His eyes are on me instead of the door. It’s a nice change. “Well, metaphorically. You don’t really talk much, do you?” 

He leans over. “Not unless I have something to say.” There’s a smile there as I swallow down the coolness of the beer. He’s looking at my neck, my Adam’s apple, which is a weird name for it, because wasn’t it his rib we supposedly got? 

“Good?” 

The beer? “Sure is.” This night? Oh, yes, baby. I stretch out my legs toward the door and let my sandals slide down my aching feet. “Honestly? I’m thinking these were a mistake.” And I think you should take me home and rub the exhaustion out of me with those long fingers. You can start with my heels and work your way to my hoo-ha. It’ll be nice, clean fun. 

He eyes my legs, but reaches down into the beer cart and starts pulling bottles back into imaginary quadrants from the sloppy pit they’ve fallen into as the ice has melted. “Bar gravy,” he says out of the corner of his mouth, hunting for all the Budweisers and moving them over on his side of the tub. 

“Excuse me?” 

“Bar gravy. You don’t wear open-toed shoes here. You get bar gravy between your toesies. The three B’s.” 

I blink. “Do I want to know?” 

“Beer. Barf. Blood. Bar gravy.” 

I drop my legs. “No. No, I did not want to know. Eww.” 

He’s laughing while I knock back most of the beer. I cannot get enough of him. Some guys, they laugh and it makes me feel icky, dirty. I want to crawl out of my skin. For others laughter is a tool, a way to show they own the room, the situation, the moment, period, and you’re just sort of a witness to it. Edward laughs, and I see my future, from goofy sex with various food aides to rocking chairs from Cracker Barrel on a porch like Granddad’s one day, far away, when the funniest thing to behold is the way his crazy hair has gone gray and fuzzy in the summer’s wind while he sits back and curses the president. 

I’m in trouble. Goddamn, I am ever in trouble. 

“It’s nothing a good bath won’t cure. But I’d invest in some shoes that cover up your toes.” 

“I am bathing in Lysol tonight, I swear.” Swarh. My beer is empty. A girl comes by and asks me for an Amstel Light, so I retrieve one and take her money, passing it over to him for her change. He counts out the ones and quarters and hands it over. She tips me and wanders away, her eyes barely leaving the phone in her hand. 

I pass the tip over to him and this time our hands do meet. There’s a bit of light-nen there, the kind that chases right through to my bar gravy toes. I drank that beer a bit fast. My fingers curl around his big ol’ hand without permission from my brain. “Your hands are so cold. You need to warm up.” 

He’s looking me in the eye, just for a second but it’s there, deep green down to the soul. “It’s the ice.” His Adam’s apple works in his throat and I long to press my lips…just there. 

“You’ll catch your death.” I haven’t let him go. 

His other hand comes up and pats mine on his, sliding my fingers away slowly. “I’m fine, Bella. Trust me. I’m good and warm.” 

The loss of contact stings, even with him taking care to be gentle about it. “Hot,” I say. “You’re hot. Lordy, I need another beer.” He hands me a Rolling Rock and I try to pay him, but he’s having none of it. I blow out a frustrated breath. “Take the money. You act like Alice. I do not need your charity to get myself intoxicated.” 

“Let’s say I enjoy the show,” he says, and his gaze is everywhere – up, down, all around, take me home, we’ll go to town. “Drink your beer. You’ve had a long day.” 

If anything can pull my attention away from him and my side eyes trying to figure out if his apron looks, um, fuller, than it did a minute ago, that’s it. 

“What do you mean ‘I‘ve had a long day?’ Have you been talking to Esme and Emmett? This is the gossipingest damn place I ever did see. Would you kindly tell your mother to keep her pretty little nose out of my business?” 

He’s smiling but there’s an edge there when he answers me. “Stepmother.” 

“Pardon?” 

“She’s my stepmother. And yes, she’s a gossiper. But try not to take it personally. She’s an equal opportunity meddler.” 

Seth lets in a big party of bikers, and Edward gets busy before I can ask him to elaborate. I drink the second beer and help him keep the rush straight by taking the money from the guys in line behind the others and giving them their beers, then passing back their change as he finishes up with the first ones. One of them, a sort of Willie Nelson look-alike with a whitish braid down his back and black chaps strapped to his blue jeans looks from me to Edward and whistles in tune with the old Bob Seger song on the jukebox. 

“Got you a good looking assistant here, man,” he says, buying a Coors Light and a traveler for later so he doesn’t have to fight the crowd for round two. “Somebody’s going home happy, right, boy?” 

Edward’s a bit deer-in-headlights, eyes a little glassy. His black stir straw droops at the edge of his mouth, which has gone slack. I jump in to try to clear up the mess. “Oh! No. I’m not his, I mean we’re not – I just work here.” I point from Edward to my chest with the hand that isn’t holding beer number three. “I mean, he’s got a girlfriend! And I’m not her. I mean, she’s not me.” 

Willie looks from me to Edward and cocks his head. “I’d like to see her then,” he says, and the whole group of them bust up. Another one, probably my dad’s age, zeroes in on the cleavage Alice’s dress gives me by way of its tightness. “Not me,” he says. “I’m good with this one right here.” 

Edward crosses his arms. “Alright, fellas. Move it along.” Seven bikers and something in the set of his jaw, the way it tightens when he swallows hard, I don’t know, but they shake their heads and go, laughing and catcalling as they shuffle around the flow of traffic next to the main bar. 

“Thanks for that.” The beer is cool against my palms. I hold it against my ribs and watch him, but he won’t look at me. He’s glaring at their retreating backs. 

“You’re welcome.” 

I clear my throat and try to think of something else, something less likely to have me imagining him taking me home, undressing me, washing me, touching me, licking me, holding me, needing me. Times forever. I need something to knock my libido back down to an acceptable roar. 

“Esme,” I say. 

He jerks, and his arms loosen a bit. “What?” 

“Esme. You were saying, Esme is your stepmother? I thought maybe but I wasn’t sure.” 

He pulls a huge wad of cash out of his apron and starts facing it. “Yeah. She is.” 

“So, she and your dad have been together a long time then?” 

“Almost twenty-three years.” He doesn’t look up. 

I do the math. Not much room in there before Jasper was cooking. “How old are you?” 

He glances up. “How old are you?” 

“I asked you first.” 

“I asked you second.” 

“I’m twenty-three. Well, in two months.” 

His face lifts. “I’m twenty-four. In one month.” 

“Huh.” I’m sucking on the edge of the bottle, just thinking. “I thought you were older than me.” 

“I am older than you.” 

“I mean a lot older.” 

He lifts one eyebrow. That move right there, it works down into my innards and boils my blood, like the fruit in a batch of Hairy Buffalo. Take me drunk, I’m home, Occifer Mitchell. 

“Creepy older?” 

Glory be. I lean back against the half wall and nurse my beer. “No. Definitely not creepy, just you know, mature. You seem so serious all the time.” 

“And you seem hard.” He’s playing with his radio thingy. 

“Excuse me?” 

“Hard. Little miss badass. Esme said you handle yourself well, though.” He turns a knob on the walkie talkie and asks for Seth. There’s feedback and we both wince but Seth’s happy-go-lucky voice comes through clearly. “What you need, boss man?” 

He drags his hand through the cart. “Another case of Bud Light. And some clean towels.” He turns off the radio, stows it in an apron pocket, and manages to catch a group of girls going by and sell them more beer with little effort. That scowl. It’s a weapon. 

“I don’t want to think about today anymore,” I say when they all stop fawning and get the hell on out of our bubble. “Tell me something happy.” 

He starts in about his plans for this Sunday, how he’s going to take his old catamaran out on Lake Michigan for the first time since getting the sail mended. I don’t know the term so he explains how the boat is set up. Bigger ones can be like mini yachts but his is small, two slim hulls that float side by side and “sail like an angel” because of how light the entire contraption is. 

“But where do you sit?” I don’t understand. “Do they have a seat in the middle?” 

“It’s a trampoline, actually,” he says. “It’s like a tarp that’s suspended between the hulls. But that’s really for your feet. You sit on the side of the hull.” 

“Right on top the water?” 

“Pretty much.” 

I must pull a face because he laughs again, and oh, oh. Somewhere later, beneath the muck and squalor of this day and its long hours of run and parry and earn and yearn, I will remember this moment. He reaches out and runs his hand down the side of my heated arm. “You get used to it. You’d love it out there.” 

My eyes close but it’s not the thought of the water I’m falling beneath. “I don’t know.” 

I tell him about Granddad getting rebaptized in the river back home. There’s carp in there as long as a man’s arm. I wouldn’t want to fall in, not in the deep water. We talk a lot about the water, about swimming in the branch down beside Meryl’s old single wide that she abandoned when she built the house up the hill from it. He tells me about his Hobie Bravo, this one he’s taking out tomorrow, which is small, only about twelve feet. It’s special to him because his Grandpa Lee bought it for him when he was about ten from a guy down the street from his mother’s. It’s the perfect size for one or two, a simple boat good for new sailors to learn on. 

Before I know it, the beer cart is nearly empty and he’s radioing Seth to come pack it in with him. I hop down from my perch and sort of slide. He throws out an arm to catch me and looking up into his face does nothing to steady my unsteady legs. 

“Ah’ve had a might to drink, haven’t I?” 

“You have.” 

“Hey,” I say, my fingers on his forearm at my waist. “Hey, do you want to go somewhere when you’re done? We could eat. Or just talk some more?” I’m strung out looking at him. The room is sort of wavering around me, dark and lights and music and many fewer people than there were maybe an hour ago. 

“Oh.” He turns me loose. “I better not, Bella. I usually go straight home. And it’s late…” 

Of course. She’s at home. 

He pushes his hands into his pockets and cocks his head. “How are you getting home, though? I don’t think you ought to be on the train like this. It’s not safe.” 

“Ah’ll be fine.” 

“I’ll take her.” 

Jacob is at the door with Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Diva. Busty has her hands in his back pocket. Trollop. 

“Do you just lurk around and wait for the perfect time to ruin a moment?” 

“I lurk around and make sure you’ve got a ride, Bells,” he says, and Blondie shoots me some major bitch face. “I’m not gonna leave you unsupervised–” he gives Edward some bitch face of his own, “when I can see you’ve been drinking ever since you got off work.” 

“You’re a real gentleman, Jake.” 

He glares at me. “Yes, actually. I am.” 

The gentleman drug pusher. Real sense of humor, this one. 

Edward turns to me. “You trust this guy?” 

Jake puffs up, but even like that he’s kind of an angry penguin because I’m taller than him in these shoes. “Of course, she trusts me.” 

My hair is a rat’s nest. I can feel how it’s all settling out, the mussed hair and the beer. My mascara is probably down around my elbows by now. Not a look to stick around in. “Yeah, I trust him. He’ll make sure I get home.” 

Jake extends his hand toward me, and there’s triumph in his dark eyes, the gladness of hope and glory. I think about Princess Jasmine and the sultans of the world. I am not a prize to be won! Even so, I take a step toward him but at the last second as we’re nearing the door, my liquor makes me brave. I turn and dash back to Edward, throwing my arms around his neck. 

“Whoa, there.” His hands come up to loosen mine around his back. I burrow my nose into the skin of his throat and breathe in the smell of him, brushing against the roughness of his stubble. 

“Thanks for letting me hang out, okay? I’ll see you.” 

He rubs my back, just with the one hand. “Okay. Be careful, Bella.” 

I nod against his neck, my lips against him just lightly, and I ache for more, for any and for all. 

“Let’s go, Bella.” Jake is waiting. 

I slip away, walking past him out the topside doors. I don’t look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was gardening today. I love to garden. I love roses and all my vegetables. Since it's pandemic season, I've been cutting the boys' hair and like a good Appalachian granny witch, I go out and spread the clippings in the garden at night to keep the deer and rabbits away. (It works! But you have to spread it after the sun goes down.)  
> What do you do to find some peace in our crazy times?


	16. Do No Harm

“You need to relax. Come back with us. You can get some sleep in the guest rooms and I’ll take you home in the morning.”

Jake is campaigning hard and Barbie and Skipper aren’t loving him for it. I keep trying to count the stops as the lights of the train flash and fly by, but I have had too much to drink. It’s tough being a lightweight, particularly when so much of your life makes you want to drink like Alice’s Uncle Ryan when the Dawgs lose.

Did he want me to come sailing with him? What did he mean I’d love it out there? Does that mean in general I should take up boating when the idea of getting near the water sends me into a cold sweat and closes my throat up tighter than a base drum? Or did he mean, ‘I’ll get you used to it?’ Like a promise, like I can look forward to it, because one day that touch on my arm will be more than a casual caress, more than whatever shit I build it up to be in my mind?

I can’t believe it, any of it, him or Jake or me or James or the Boobsey Twins or Victoria, or her, or the way when life speeds up into possibilities they always belong to someone else. The ride you’re rolling on, it crashes and throws you out cold. Belief begets loss. Daddy said that once, and he followed it up just as quick with the words Granddad always drove home on that rocker, the book in one hand, a Pall Mall in the other. “Believe anyway. Have faith. It keeps us above the animals. Only faith.” 

“Come with us,” he says, and my stomach rolls as we dip underground again. I look up at the fluorescents and I nod, because fine. 

Whatever. 

**

Jake's hands are running along my throat in time with the flashing rhythm in my head. He leans in and replaces one hand with his lips, and I am frozen and deeply mistaken. Never trust a dealer. He laves at my throat, thick lips of burning earth, and I want to push him away but my reflexes are curiously slow.   
  
I blink as he licks at me, feasting on the sweat of a night of hustle, and I lift my left hand as high as I can off the couch. It floats and fades in front of me, the paleness of my own flesh and bones dripping into the darkness and the vibrating beat of the sound system. I can see the music in the air but I cannot feel my own hands. I flex my fingers and move they do, but the movement is an echo against bubbles in the air, a chilling reminder that something, something other than his mouth on my shoulder, has gone horribly wrong tonight.   
  
The answer comes to me in a color, the same fern of Edward's eyes. I'm high.   
  
"Stop." My mouth is mangled and I try to say more but there are dozens of little glass marbles on my tongue and if I open too wide I will surely swallow one and choke. My head lolls and I shake it, side to side, slowly, and the colors of the candles in the room and the movie on the big screen blur and dance with each turn of my head.   
  
"Shh." He doesn't want to quit. He's palming my breast through the dress, squeezing the life he isn't supposed to touch anymore. "I'll take care of you, B. Shh." His mouth is fire and I am twitching, burning, and I want to scream but the marbles are there. I flinch and shake and start to thrash but no, be still, because moving makes the sounds hurt deep inside my ears. The scratch of his stubble on my neck is making me weep. It hurts.   
  
"Stop. Jake? St-stahp." Breathe. Deep. It's so hot and loud in here and the red of that girl's smile, it feels like talons in my skin, so red.   
  
"Bells? Bella? What's wrong?"   
  
How long has he been talking?   
  
There's laughter, female, not mine, and my head is slipping over toward Jake's waiting hands. He's rubbing me too hard, over my arms, again, again. Stop. Stop. Stop.   
  
She keeps laughing.   
  
"What the hell did you do?"   
  
Laughter.   
  
"You fucking bitch. What did you slip her? I'll kill you. Do you hear me? I'm going to fucking kill you."   
  
There's a smack, a crack that seems to shred the walls beside us and Embry is here at once, moving in a wash of flavored smoke. "Boss, no. Let me handle this. Bella. You help Bella." Vaguely, I can hear crying, struggling, a sharp but muffled scream, but it comes in waves, like someone has screwed the top on a jar of pasta and is shaking it like a tamborine.    
  
I'm going to die. Oh, Edward. How I wanted to know you. Edward. "Ehd-werd. Ehhhd-werrd."   
  
Edward.   
  
Jake is pinching my chin in his hands. "Look at me. Bella. Look at me. I'm going to get you help. I'm going to help you, baby. I promise."   
  
They all promise sometimes.

  
  
**

No hospital. It's not a reaction, per se. Or maybe it is (it probably is) but it really doesn't matter because I'm not dying and hospitals mean police for this kind of thing and questions, and those little “Mmhms” and chin dips they do that make you feel sad about your place in the world. Somebody ends up cuffed and somebody ends up with an extra delivery or a bit more money under the floor mat and it goes away, but first it’s annoying and messy and trouble. Jake doesn’t like trouble, and Lord alive, he knows I’ve had enough of it.

I don't like being high. It never works out well for me, at least not pills, which must have been what I got because I didn't smoke or shoot anything. I have cardiac arrhythmias. I’ve known for a long time that I had something screwy with my ticker, but it’s the man now leaning in front of me with an open bag and a pen light in my eye that first diagnosed me. Dr. Ranard Saint. We’re well acquainted, but damn if I wasn’t hoping it’d be a while before we met again. You know, like just this side of forever. 

Having already listened to my heart and assaulted my eyeballs with light, he pulls a straight pin from sealed plastic casing and starts poking me in the face. I’m sluggish, but I turn away. “Knock ‘er off, Peter. I ain’t dead yet.” I call him Peter, you know, because he’s Dr. Saint? For some reason, he always tolerates the nickname. The fact that his wife has a serious heroine fetish and Jake never gives her enough to OD might have something to do with it. Maybe. 

He pricks my fingers and though they feel like overfried sausages, they move. “Keep ‘er up an ah’ll take you out, ol man. Soon as I’ng get up anywah.”

I don’t like it when Saint Peter frowns. It pulls what I know to be laugh lines around his eyes and mouth down into valleys of worry that crisscross his face like camel tracks in the sand of his skin. He’s Indian so he has that lovely dark skin. His wife, his wife’s skin looked like that once. I wonder why people do the things they do. He must feel so lost in there, knowing he can’t fix what’s broken with her because it’s not flesh and blood but somewhere inside her own mind. His hair’s looking more silver these days than black. He takes off his glasses and frowns at me, rubbing his forehead with the heel of his hand. 

“Jacob said you convulsed, Isabella. I have to check for nerve damage.” He studies me a moment and then replaces the wire-rimmed frames on his slightly crooked nose. The lights in here are still dimmed but the television is off, and the music, too.  “You did not take anything yourself, correct?”

My lips feel like the desert of his face. There may be ghosts of dead pharaohs walking around on my mouth. After this night, it wouldn’t surprise me. I push myself up just a little and give him the best stank eye I can manage given the circumstances. “I drank too much, prob’ly. Me and the ticker got a ‘greement, though. No drugs.” I hold up two slow, fat fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

The fatigue is hitting me hard. I hate this part, the way the panic and rush eventually simmer down to a calm I cannot break. I could run ten miles across rocks and brush and not feel this exhausted. It’s like my heart has done so much unnecessary work that my brain is telling me to just throw in the towel for a while. It’s somebody else’s race now. I’m kaput.

Peter draws a vial with the precision of his profession. “You need rest, Isabella. I’m going to give you something to help you sleep now. You understand? This is okay?”

That accent of his. His s’s sound like d’s. “Dis id okay?” And he thinks I talk funny. His shirt sleeves feel like money beneath my fingers, expensive bleached Egyptian cotton money. I nod. “S’okay, doc.”

Peter will take care of me. His wife’s a fruitcake but he’s still a doctor. What do they swear when they sign up? 

Do no harm. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm behind on review replies among other things. I promise to get back to you soon! I hope you are all safe and well.


	17. Goliath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been having major anxiety lately. about life. about my writing. particularly about CR. maybe it's too dramatic. too much UST. too private to share. not particularly well written. anyway, they've upped my meds again. (yay. This is sarcasm. Please pronounce yay with an eyeroll and a self deprecating shrug.) so. here i am again. i'm sorry. being a mom to 4, a FT leader and director, and a functioning human during a pandemic while trying to also fulfill my dreams of writing makes me...crazier than usual. so...sorry. here's an update. please don't yell at me.

My eyelids feel heavy and when I open them, James is here, cradling my head in his lap. He and Jake are talking quietly. If either of those girls or Embry are around, they are not in my direct line of sight.   
  
"It's not about fault. This is your life, man. You can't keep her safe. You are the definition of unsafe."

He sure as hell is one to talk. I close my eyes again but look out through the slits to see Jake looking worn and nursing a glass of something amber-colored. "I didn't call you over here for a lecture."   
  
"No. You called because you can't be seen carrying her into her apartment and neither can any of your guys. Did she ask for me?" His fingers are working through my hair as I fake-sleep on his knees. It feels good, it really does. I just can’t really enjoy it because it’s James. God, I’m tired. If he’s going to be here, he needs to at least be useful and take me home soon.   
  
"No.” Jake makes a face. “She sounded like she was asking for that guy she works with. What’s his name? Cullen." 

“The kid Alice is with? He’s working on being a doctor.” 

“No. The brother.” Jake downs the last of his liquor with a particularly noisy swallow. “Edward. She’s stuck on that guy. I mean, there’s trouble there. He’s got a girl already. I checked.” 

James’s hand clenches in my hair. “You mean he’s dirty?” 

“No. Just attached.” 

James snorts. “She picks ‘em.” 

“We pick her. I did. From the second I saw her. She just pulls us all in.” 

“Maybe Cullen likes his regular. Maybe it’s nothing.” 

Jake hands his glass off to someone, and shakes his head. “I saw him with her tonight.” There’s a deep sigh, like all the emphasis on the second breath, the way he sounds when he’s just sick and tired of the predictability of the addicts he supplies. “He’s trying, but it won’t last. He’ll be just like us.” 

“Speak for your damn self. I plan to keep my self-respect.” 

This is not worth staying awake for, so I don’t. 

** 

I wake up in my own bed. James is pulling the covers up over me, smoothing my hair back from my face with the pads of his smooth fingers. I’m in a big cotton sleep shirt, and I start to panic, because how? 

“Shh,” he says, hand on my chin. “One of Jake’s girls cleaned you up before we left. I didn’t touch you. No one did. Go back to sleep.” 

There’s truth in what he says. I can see her in my mind’s eye, a too slender girl of maybe twenty, the kind you never know about – where she came from, why she left, where she’ll go. She asked me if I wanted the sweats or the t-shirt. I went for the shirt because it seemed like less work, a quick pull and down onto the bed in the back room to sleep in the dark black wonder of whatever was in that vial. Dreamless and drifting. May God bless and keep Saint Peter. 

“I’ll be on the couch if you need me.” 

I watch his shadow in the moonlight, the way his lengthy form takes up the entire doorway to my room as he turns and pulls it halfway shut behind him. He looks like my James, but he’s not. Maybe he never was. 

I stare at the ceiling for a few moments, drifting on the edge of unconsciousness. There’s a flash of light beside me and I reach out in the darkness, pulling my phone off the bedside table. It’s been put on silent but there are messages and another just came in. 

They are all from Edward. 

“Hey, it’s Edward. Did you get home ok?” That was 3 a.m.. 

4 a.m. “Are you ok?” 

It’s now five thirty in the morning. “I’m hoping you’re just asleep. I’m sorry if I bothered you. I just wanted to know you were safe.” 

My fingers, mercifully, seem to work now. I type back quickly. “Fell asleep. Just saw these. I’m ok.” 

There’s a thud and something lands on the bed. For a moment I feel a scream trying to work up in my throat, but it’s just Bails looking for a snuggle buddy. Good grief. “My heart didn’t need that, you shithead.” I am whispering at the cat, shaking my finger. He is thoroughly unimpressed and almost invisible in the moonlight. 

“Oh. Good. Well, goodnight.” 

“Thanks for checking on me.” 

“No problem.” 

I haven’t given anyone at Cullen’s my number. Rosalie doesn’t have it, and neither does Leah. I need to think harder about this than I have the capacity for at this moment in my recovery. I’m supposed to work tomorrow afternoon, and it’s my last day with Lauren, and I have drink lists to learn. I can’t call in. They’ll all think I’m a drunk and a bigger loser than I feel like already. 

I stare at his texts until I fall asleep with the phone in my hand, listening to the steady whir of Bails’ Corvette pussy motor near my ear. Fucker always wants to sleep with his ass up by my head. 

I don’t even care tonight. I’m just so glad for every miracle great and small. Not being dead, that’s a good one, and Edward. Yeah, Edward. As far as God goes, I’m digging it. I mean my poor choices haven’t obliterated me so He must still be paying attention. 

For now. 

** 

James makes coffee in the morning for him and tea for me – Earl Grey, two Splendas and a heavy splash of cream. The fact that he remembers doesn’t surprise me. Certain things about a person you don’t forget. For instance, the fact that he is married, that he was already engaged to her when he proposed to me, that beneath that delicious exterior is a man so twisted inside that his soul has lost the shine of humanity? Yeah. I haven’t forgotten that either. He doesn’t make love. He goes hard every time, like he’s making you pay for loving him, for knowing that place where he goes when he dies inside you. He takes his coffee black and he likes big breakfasts, with runny eggs and gravy. Steak if it’s available. Bloody steak. 

I am out of eggs. I am happy that I am out of fucking eggs. I smile at the thought. No soup for you, motherfucker. 

He brings the mug to me and sits in the corner on my antique rocker, his big legs in well cut black jeans crossed out in front of him like swords in their sheath. “You need to call in.” He gestures toward my phone. “That thing charged? If not, you can use mine.” 

One favor and he thinks he can boss me again. It ain’t happening. 

“I’m not calling in.” 

“The hell.” 

I get up to go pee, yanking the edge of my borrowed sleep shirt down and upsetting Bails in the process. He yowls when the edge of my comforter gets flung back in his face. 

“I’m not calling in.” I slam the door and geez, oh Pete, who knew that a night of being that messed up would make me need to pee so badly? I sound like a racehorse. At the same time, my mouth feels like day-old cotton candy. I also stink. 

“You need rest. You could have died. Call in or I’ll call in for you.” He’s hollering through the door from his corner in my room. Alice would have a coronary if she saw him here, making himself at home. 

“Rest. I’m serious. This kind of shit is bad for your heart.” 

That’s a low blow. I think about the last time it was bad, in my ruined studio, the shouting and the crying, the way my traitor heart threw in the towel before I was ready. James and his anger, for her, Vickie, and the way she stood there while the sirens got closer and he was scared, so scared. “She’s fucking faking,” she said. “Leave her. Let’s go.” 

He finally did. He didn’t want to but that’s not the part that matters. He fucking left. 

“No way.” 

I need to do something about my mouth, and my hands are shaking as I squeeze out a big glop of toothpaste and start going to town. My gums are gonna be bleeding. 

I hear Siri asking him what he needs and he’s saying, “Give me the number for Cullen’s Roadhouse in Chicago, please.” 

I burst through the door and the knob hits the drywall with a thwack. That’s not good. 

“Don’t you dare.” I probably look like a rabid dog. There’s toothpaste running down my arm toward my elbow, and it’s falling out of my mouth onto the hardwoods but I don’t care. I point at him with it, stabbing the air to make my points. “Don’t.you.dare. I ain’t got a rich bitch wife to pay all my bills and tuck me in at night. I got rent comin’. I can’t even afford canvas right now. How am I s’posed to get out of this hole if I don’t do something soon I can sell? You wanna help? Tell her to pay me the money the court says she owes. Otherwise, get the fuck out of my apartment.” 

He lays his phone in my windowsill and carefully sets the coffee cup on the floor beside him. “I helped you. Jake called and I came. I’m trying.” 

“Don’t.” 

“Don’t what? Care? Goddamn it, Bella. If I could’ve quit with you I’d have done it a long time ago. You scared me to death last night.” 

I lower the toothbrush and just stare because what? What revisionist bullshit is this? He’s the fucking David Irving of Chicago. 

I breathe slowly because my heart is racing and he’s right about just one thing, and that’s that I don’t need this stress on top of everything else. 

“I’m working,” I say, and I speak slowly because it’s a proven fact that idiots process things better when you keep it down around their level. “Thank you for bringing me home safely. I am going to take a shower. Please, let yourself out.” 

I stalk back into the bathroom and start to slam the door again but think better of it. The last thing I need is a repair bill for unnecessary damage. 

** 

He’s in the living room, arranging my paint and charcoals and easel near the big window when I come out. He’s a giant in here, the Goliath I need to finally slay. The box what’s left of my things were neatly packed away in sits by the door for recycling. It’s what I’d left with Alice or was working on at home, at Dad’s. He’s not this slow. He’s just annoying and really, really selfish. 

“You want breakfast? Come on. I’ll buy.” 

“No, thanks.” 

“Come on. It’s just breakfast. I miss my friend.” 

“We are not friends.” 

We are, were, are. When we weren’t fighting or fucking, we were friends, good ones. It’s tough to find anyone that can take my sarcasm, plate it up, and dish it back. It’s difficult to find someone who doesn’t back down from me, who doesn’t expect me to cut the whiskey with some sugary sweet Coke. Alice, sure, but James is different. He meets me head on, and he never flinches, not because of history and our grandmas and too many years to toss, but because he wants to be there. The problem is that when we’re friends, we lose our way. We fight and fuck and fuck it up. Over and over again. We get lost not only in each other but we lose ourselves in the depths of that friction. I’m tired of being lost. I am looking for The Way. Where’s Mando and Baby Yoda when you need them? 

He’s watching me, though, with those blue eyes, and I think about how many women fell for Sinatra, how many crumpled under the penetration of blue eyes, offering themselves up for destruction. He’s got that kind of focus with a look, pulling you in and making you believe his truths. 

“We’ll always be friends,” he says. “Cut the shit. I’m hungry.” 

When I don’t move, he picks up my trainers and passes them over. 

“Let’s go.” 

I nod. “Just breakfast, asshole.” 

“I promise not to finger you under the table.” 

“Keep that up and I will bust your ass.” 

“You promise?” 

See? Put him in front of Sherman, and he wouldn’t have the sense to run. 

** 

Leah takes one look at me later and starts shaking her head. “Rose wanted to know if you were working shots tonight, but I’m guessing not.” 

I tried really hard. James put away two of his biscuits and one of mine, two dishes of gravy, two fried eggs, and both of our orders of bacon. I got through one piece of bacon and some dry toast. My stomach is rolling but it’s not the hangover so much as the aftermath of whatever I took. Normal people would be hooked to an IV about now, sucking their lunch through a straw. 

Me? I’m working. I’m going to make my own way. As God as my witness, I’ll never be broke again. Or at least, not this broke. 

He handed me my Crown Royal bag before he left. “Jake sent it back with you,” he said. “It’s all there.” 

So they say. I wouldn’t put it past either one of them to just replace whatever was stolen and not tell me until they feel like it might help their case for whatever. I took it, of course. I’m not stupid. 

“I’d really like to do it,” I tell Leah as I clock in, one eye searching around Mad Eye Moody style for Edward. “I can next time but it’s been a really long week. If it’s okay, I might just stay home tonight.” 

She eyes me. When she swallows, her Adam’s apple bobs in her slim brown throat. “I don’t need any more drunks on staff, Bella. I got enough problems with users. You take the rest of the weekend off, you better show up Monday clear as a bell.” 

We walk together up the steps and stop on the landing before top of house. I lean against the jukebox and find an old Seeger song to replace the thumping pop trash that’s currently playing. When my quarter drops, I turn back to where she stands, rail thin in jeans and a bulky Cullen’s sweatshirt. It’s already 80 outside. 

“Tell you what,” I say, and I gulp a little, because I better grow a pair for this. “I’ll walk the line if you start eatin’ a square meal a few times a day. Deal?” 

She pulls the sweatshirt down, first over one frail wrist, and then the other. She’s deliberate this one. She and James would probably hit it off, minus the whole both being married thing. “Mind your business, Bella.”

“Yeah?” 

We stand there for a few moments, just looking. I see a fucked-up woman, another one like Alice with a life that keeps happening outside of her control. She restricts food and tells people when to take a piss in here. I drink and covet another woman’s man. We’re a Lifetime movie of the week starring Lindsay Lohan and one of Charlie Sheen’s ex wives. 

“Yeah,” she says, and she trots back down the stairs, away from me. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you like reylo, i'm posting a twitfic over on my twitter as I attempt to get my mojo back enough to dive back into my regular length reylo and twi fics. 
> 
> synopsis: Ben is popular. Rey is not. Ben is rich. Rey is not. Ben plays basketball with the skill of a god. Rey just plays with his balls. She's his dirty little secret. "Wildcat." A Twitter Reylo fic. 
> 
> My handle on twitter is @TGBMcCray


	18. Ice Cream Soup

Lauren is quizzing me while I check out bottles from last night’s madhouse.

“Chocolate cake shot?”

“Frangelico and citrus vodka.”

She pops her towel on the bar. 

“Okay. A gimlet.”

Shit. Gin or vodka? “Um. Vodka and lime juice?”

She rolls her eyes at me. “If you want a vodka gimlet, sure. A regular one is gin and lime.”

I drop two more handfuls of whiskey bottles in the giant trash can. “Damn it. I’m never going to remember all these.”

“You need a break.” She holds out her hand for the pen I’m about to pick back up. “Go get something to eat.” 

“Did somebody say eat?”

Edward has materialized at the end of the bar and even though my stomach is saying no, my hoo ha is saying pretty please with sugar on top. I’m down to his end before Lauren has stopped laughing. 

Every time I see Edward he looks better than the time before but today there are dark shadows under the wet grass of his eyes. He clearly hasn’t shaved because there’s a reddish-brown scruff covering his jaw and part of his neck. I get caught up in the way the light catches the hair above his lip and I wonder how it would feel to run the tip of my finger over that spot where his lips arch in the middle. Still, he clearly didn’t have the best night of shut-eye either. 

He’s brought food, though, and Edward bearing gifts kind of makes up for anything fatigue does to the hollows around his eyes. “What’s all this?” I say, and he hands me a wrap of silverware.

“Leah said you weren’t feeling well, so I brought you the Cullen family hangover cure.” 

I don’t correct him. “Which is?”

He gestures at the plate in front of me. “Chicken quesadilla. I made yours with extra veggies. They’re baked so less grease but still enough gooey cheese to help with the hangover.”

“You have a love affair with gooey cheese, you know that, don’t you?” I’m sassing, but I’m also already fumbling with the silverware because this thing looks mouth-watering. 

“What can I say?” Oh, that smile. That smile makes my worn-to-the-bone body wake up and kegel of its own free will. “I like hot dairy.” 

We both lose it over that and while I’m shoveling in my first cheesy, spicy bites, I notice a covered dish next to the plate. “What’s this?” I tap the bowl with my fork.

He dips his head. “The rest of the cure.” His long fingers lift the cover on a dish of perfectly chopped watermelon chunks. These aren’t those sissy seedless ones either. This is the sweet old-fashioned kind with big black seeds that look right back at you. 

“Where did you find this?” I’m kind of over the moon here. I haven’t had good watermelon since last summer. 

“I know a guy.” He pulls another spoon out of his apron. “But this you have to share because the guys took the rest of it before I got any.”

He bought this especially for me? It wasn’t just sitting in the walk-in already? “Did you get this for me?”

He ducks his head, and once again his eyes are mostly on the bar instead of on me. “I picked it up on my lunch earlier. I figured you had to be dehydrated. You need water but plain water doesn’t sit great on your stomach when you’re sick.” 

He cooks. Judging from his oral fixations, he does beautiful things with his mouth. He buys watermelons out of the goodness of his heart. I’m going to marry him. He may not know it yet, but he’s on my life list now. Let’s do this, coach.

“See,” I say, as he sits down on the bar stool across from me and we both dig in, sucking on fat chunks of liquid sunshine. 

“See what?”

I point at him with my spoon. “Wonderful.”

He doesn’t look at me, but I see the smile tugging at the edge of his lips anyway.

**

There’s cake later, for Lauren, and a card that we all have taken turns signing on the fly in the keg room, on the salad cooler, next to the service bar. Esme turns up and we all sing Aude Lang Syne with her leading, which is good since she’s the only one who knows the words except the chorus. It must be a second wife trick, knowing classy songs and looking good as a blonde.

Carlisle and Emmett appear at the end of the song as Lauren blows out the candles. They’ve got Chunky Monkey and Cherry Garcia and those silly paper horns. It’s dark and the place is starting to hum. Seth is eating his cake and cutting the line for ice cream because he has to go find the beer tub and start getting it ready. My shift is ending. 

“You’re going home?” Edward bumps my shoulder as I wait for Leah to count down my drawer in the office. I’m balancing a dish of ice cream on one knee and loving this place and its warm collection of characters a little more every second. It’s not true that we are what we eat. We are what we surround ourselves with and in, and I’ve got love by osmosis right here, the kind that comes to people who care for each other for a long time and know respect. This man next to me is icing, the dessert and the main course all wrapped up into one. Plus, Leah ate a piece of cake. She flipped me off, but she ate it. I’m calling it a win.

“Yeah, I’m ready to crash.” I eye him. “What, no cake and ice cream? You’re missing out.”

“Seems like it.” 

Are we talking about more than cake here? I really want us to be talking about more than cake.

His eyes are little windows, the triangular-ones that you crank open on old trucks to give you just enough air without fucking up your hair on a hot day. Oxygen. I crave these few short seconds that those eyes meet mine and maybe it’s the ice cream or the madness of the last few days, or just that Lauren is really leaving and it’s time for me to woman-up in so many ways, but I want to push. I need to feel that I’m not alone in my crazed obsession here. 

I dip my spoon in the bowl and ladle up a little bit of ice cream that’s going to soup too quickly as the bowl rests on my heated legs. “C’mon, just a taste?” I’m a tease and he’s spoken for, and Jesus H., I cannot bring myself to feel shame. Feeling shame requires regret and that is not an emotion I can touch at the moment, nevermind taste.

He surprises me when he leans in. His long fingers wrap around my wrist to hold me, holding the spoon steady, and he tastes. He tastes and I am just...unwound.

Leah looks up from flipping cash in her rolly chair and snorts. “Take it outside,” she says, serious and poking fun at the same time. “I will maintain plausible deniability.” 

I’m saying, “It’s just ice cream, Le–” at the same time Edward says, “Fine,” and the hand on my wrist yanks me up. I barely have time to catch the bowl before it hits the floor. Leah stops with cash in one hand and plucks it out of my limp fingers, and Edward is tugging me out of the office. I’m in the hallway, with deep breaths because what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck is happening? when he turns and calls over our shoulders to her. “You keep your goddamn mouth shut, Leah. You hear me?”

I’m going to expire on the spot from the shock. I wait for Leah, the mouse who roars, to rear up and cut him down like a zebra with a broken leg, but she looks at us both and there’s no smile, only something around her eyes that looks like understanding. “Get out,” she says, but there’s no anger in it, and he’s pulling me along, wrenching open the door to the alley behind the bar and pushing me through it.

The sound of that metal door slamming behind us echoes in my ears as he looks around, left, then right, like he’s checking for spies. One hand is in his hair and the other is pushing me against the brick at my waist. When he draws it away, I can feel flames licking through my t-shirt, igniting my belly button, my stomach, and rising up my arms to my neck and face. His hand moves fast and it’s beside my face on the brick, his arm raised as he leans all of him against all of me. 

This is what heaving means. It’s not retching after a long night of molly and jack. It’s this. We’re both lit up and falling apart from the inside out. “What the fuck are you doing to me?” His mouth is so close that I can feel his hot breath on my ear on the side where my braid trails down.

“I’m not…” I try to speak words but what can I say? I don’t know what I’m doing. I only know what I want. I’m losing my mind, and he’s going to lose that glorious hair of his if he doesn’t let go of it.

“You are.” He sounds like me when I try to keep up with Alice on a long run. Every word is a labor, a darkness and a moment to slip inside and be lost.

“Edward.” I can’t give him anything else but this is the wrong thing. It must be, because he pulls back abruptly and pushes himself against the wooden rail behind us on this little deck. 

“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t say my name. I can’t…”

He paces and mutters and every few steps he slaps his palm against the rail, like by Jove, he’s got it, except I don’t think he’s got anything right now except maybe half a mind to strangle me. If he’s normally the soft and constant swishing of a grandfather clock, this is haywire. It’s Batteries Not Included and little flying discs of metal cooking up madness it the midst of short-circuiting. He honestly looks like he’s going to blow. 

“I’m sorry,” I say, and I am. “Please don’t be mad at me. I just like talking to you. I just want to –”

“Stop.”

Know you. 

All at once his head snaps up from his tennis shoes. He walks over to me and stands close but not Press-and-Seal-over-my-yogurt close like before. He raises his hand but his voice is low. “Can I touch you?” 

Speech is impossible but I manage a nod. His fingers touch my neck, and there is hesitance but so much warmth in just the brush of his fingertips along my throat and down to the collar of my bar t-shirt. His thumb brushes that smooth spot under my earlobe and instinct makes me lean into his palm. He keeps going, softly and calmly now, smoothing his large hand over my throat. He could reach past my ears to the back of my neck on both sides if he wanted, his hands are that big. My eyes close after a bit and the stiffness leaves me, and somewhere with it, the worry. 

“What are you doing tomorrow, Bella?” My eyes flutter but his fingers are constant. In fact, the other hand has taken up the petting party on my bare forearm between us. Who knew forearms and the six inches of skin from collar to chin could be so erotic? Not this girl. 

“It’s Sunday,” I say, which is stupid because he knows that. “So, yoga? Church. Running.” 

“Hmm.”

I dare a peek at him. “You?”

“I’m sailing tomorrow.”

I breathe deeply, dragging in the smell of him so close to me. “Will there be enough wind?” It’s so calm right now. I think even the air around us is caught in his power. 

“You don’t need wind. You can always paddle. Or if it’s really still, take the motor out and then just drift.” 

I don’t drift, but him? I can see it, him out there in the deep blue, letting the water take him where it may. He’s bathed in amber light out here, under the alleyway lamp. There are no stars above us, just copper haze and darkness. I’m drifting now and it’s the most out of control I’ve ever been, right here with his hand wrapped around my throat as anchor. There hasn’t been a moment of my life yet that compares and even that scares me, knowing it, admitting it to myself. 

“Hmm.” He laughs when I hum back at him. I’m a cat with his hands on me, stretching and glorying in the contact like a shameless purring puss. 

His leans in and his lips are so close to me, right at my ear. He leans his forehead against mine. “You’re so alive,” he says.“I’m sorry about earlier, about this. I shouldn’t have…”

Deep breath. In through my nose, out through my mouth, my cleansing breath. I focus on the first thing he said. “So are you.”

His eyelashes touch my cheek. I feel him blink against my skin. 

“I am now.” 

His hands run from my shoulder down to my wrists and he’s pulling me again, but gently, leading me back through the door he’s opened beside us. His hand is on the small of my back and we’re standing in front of the office door. Leah hands me my money. 

“I shouldn’t have yelled at you.” He’s looking at Leah, but she’s looking at his hand on me, where I dip, just above my ass. “I apologize.”

“Don’t apologize to me,” she says, and it’s cutting, her tone, but he doesn’t move his hand. 

“I am,” he says. “I’m sorry.” 

“Goodnight,” I say, and she nods. I turn to go and he follows me. Downstairs at the garage doors there’s a line forming behind the doormen, waiting to come inside. His radio crackles and it’s Seth. The beer cart is ready for him.

“Go home,” he says to me as I add my bar towel to the laundry pile next to the service bar. It’s not a tack on when he speaks again. It’s morose, almost a prayer. “Please.”

I wish he wasn’t going home later, to her. I think it but say, “Oh, I will. I’m exhausted.” I find my keys in the little cross body purse thing Alice sent me from LA that one time and wave them at him. “I even drove myself today. See?” 

He just smiles, and one finger touches the underside of my wrist, and he’s walking away. His apron frames his ass perfectly. It’s like a picture window of gluteus ass-omeness. I’m going to have so much to pray over tomorrow morning.

**

Of course, I can’t sleep. By one in the morning, the charcoals Alice gave me are sufficiently blunted. Several sheets of heavy paper are littered around my cheetah lounger. Bails is purring up a storm on my lap while I sip some shitty red wine. 

His hands wrap around my throat in one. In another, I’m clawing his forearms like the witch I actually am. All of the others are his eyes, his dimple, the burn scars on his forearms, the broadness of his shoulders in his Cullen’s shirt, the water drops falling from his hands at the beer cart.

Bails is grouchy, half-ass yowling and clenching his claws into the cotton of my jammy pants. He’d rather we were snuggling in bed right now. For that matter, so would I. 

I am so fucked. After tonight, maybe we both are.


	19. Happy Sunday

Holiness finds even us sinners on Sundays in summer. There’s a heaviness to the morning air, even with the de ad-on-its-feet decrepit air conditioner running outside my window. I hit the bathroom and then I hit my knees after a few sun salutations.

I always think about Minerva when I’m on my yoga mat: “To  unduhstahnd the  leeving , you got  tu commune  wid the dead.” Most people who do yoga will tell you they use it to empty their minds, to free themselves of the ghosts and grains of pain and duty, the worry and spilled coffee that dog their steps the rest of the day. It works this way for me, but much more slowly. My mind speeds up before it slows down, and I find myself thinking hard rather than not thinking, until at last the pieces I’m trying to paste together sort of fall into place on their own. Today, I think of Edward and what could become love, and how they say love is a little death. I know they mean orgasm, but it’s more than that, isn’t it? It’s the death of who you are alone and the beginning of who you will be as part of a pair. I wonder if he feels that with Jessica, that oneness, that feeling that he is not only ending but extending into something greater than himself?

I thought I had that once. I did have it. I have known it for a while, and I’ve made peace with it, but it hurts even now to think about. I breathe deeply as I push into Down Dog, and exhale too choppily because realizing that you can be in love alone is a harsh truth of adulthood that hurts more than discovering your dad is Santa and people don’t live forever. 

It’s a crack, lightning, in the mist of my mind and my heel wobbles when a possible truth comes. I almost fall out of warrior III because holy shit – what if Jessica is in love with Edward alone? I mean, yay rah for me, but for her? Jesus H. Christ. What could be worse than being in love with a man like Edward all by yourself? 

Worse, what if one day I am?

There are two messages on my phone when I start peeling off my yoga clothes on my way to the shower. One is Daddy, who wants to know when today I’m going to call because he’s fishing till midday and already on the water. I text to tell him I’ll call after church and flip to the next one, which is James, being,  unfortunately, James .

“Mass today?” Two words, and he’s under my skin like a sweat bee sting, and damn, the irritation. He could be asking if I’m going, and he could be asking me to go with him. The ambiguity is part of his shit. He throws things out and waits for you to take his bait. He never gives what you need but he always takes what he wants. 

The day grandma died I was twenty-two. James was five months into the utter destruction of my life. Everything that we had been had already blown to bits but like a fool I kept trying to glue it back together. I called him from the funeral home. He wouldn't come. He wouldn't do anything but tell me I just needed to relax and sure, he'd leave the door unlocked. I wasn’t stupid. I was lost. You bet your ass I swallowed down my fried chicken and pecan pie and was cuttin’ and runnin’ out the doors of Shady Vines Missionary Baptist before my cousins finished the egg salad appetizers at the after-funeral carry-in.

My feet heavy on the peddl e of a Chevy carri ed me from one hell to another.  Grandma was dead and so was our chance at love , mine and James’s, but he fucked me anyway. Then he went to sleep on the couch. Victoria’s picture was back on his bedside tabl e by then, and I knocked it over out of childish spite.  When I got up to pee later, I found her toothbrush in a drawer of the sink and used it to clean the grime around the sink spout. She could not keep us apart and neither could good sense.

I will not be ensnared again. I turn the shower on to get hot and thumb a text back  while  I brush my teeth. “Not with you.”

He responds as I’m spitting red-tinged paste into the sink. “Peace be with you, babe. See you soon.”

Prick. I toss the phone on top of my dirty clothes hamper and hop in the shower, almost yanking the curtain off its rings.  See me soon? 

Not fucking likely.

**

The old church sits in a neighborhood two stops up from me where the majority of the parishioners are Hispanic. The priest does early mass in English and the more popular ten- thirty one in Spanish. I make it to the 8:30, practically running up the aisle to a seat in my black heels and blessing the saints all the while that I remembered to wear ankle strap shoes for the sprint. 

Two dark-haired men at the edge make room for me to squeeze in between them and a mom with four girls and a boy lined up next to her, who take up most of the rest of the row. The benches, a honeyed wood, have no cushions to ease the dull ache that settles in to my backside after about ten minutes. Of course, that’s the up side of Catholicism. If you don’t like your seat, you’re up and out of it every few minutes anyway. 

The priest is youngish. He looks maybe forty-five and unfortunately kind of bookishly attractive with his grey temples and wire-rimmed glasses. Unfortunate because he’s a priest and even Meryl steers clear of checking out clergy, which makes me doubly screwed considering the fact that I desperately need to chase him down when mass ends. What’s one more sin? I’ve got a beer cart full of them, and it’s about time I confessed to somebody. 

Forgive me, Father, for Edward is my sin.

Up and down, pray and repeat, and for what should I pray? Peace? A five for twenty-six dollar sale on panties since all mine are basically ruined?  I pray for smiles with dimples and prolonged eye contact, but I immediately take it back.  Shit, shit, shit. I really hope Jesus has a sense of humor. If he doesn’t, I am so in trouble later. 

When I’m walking up the line for communion, my hands folded into a small pocket of absolution, I feel someone looking at me. That creepy crawly feeling walks up the back of my neck and I turn a little, casting about for whoever it is. I don’t know him, or at least I don’t think I do. I see a lot of people in a day at Cullen’s, and my shot shift took me past hundreds of characters. This guy, he’s the Guinness among a bunch of pale ales, hearty and thick and tall, full-bodied without being a total meathead, but a presence nonetheless. I’m not sure how I missed him before, except that my head is so full of Edward that I tend not to see other men the way I once did. 

It’s impossible not to see him now. He’s Hispanic, but tall, like Edward and James tall, with deep olive skin and almond-shaped eyes that look completely black from this distance. He hasn’t taken communion yet because he’s in one of the rows near the back that were full when I came in. He’s gawking at me, and a few head swivels confirm it, because I am surrounded by children and old people and he is staring right at me. I blink and scurry up in line because it’s uncomfortable but when I dare a peek back, he’s still looking and now he’s laughing with a friend nearby, a sort of shorter carbon copy who might actually be a brother. The next time I look back, he nods at me, black hair so black it shines flopping into his eyes, and at that I turn and focus on the priest up ahead. I do not look his way again.

The priest gives me my wafer and blesses me, and I close my eyes as I walk and chew, just for a second. Dear Lord, show me the way. Just show me the way. I’m a hot mess up in here, b ut I am here and I am here for Y ou, not Edward or James or Jake or the Mexican Channing Tatum in the back row. You show me, Lord. Please.

I drop to my knees again after I slide back in my row, purposely not looking toward the back as I go. The lady’s kids next to me are tired and grouchy. S he’s chiding them to leave her cell phone alone, as I fold my fingers together over the back of the bench in front of us and try to tune t hem out. I need help here. I surely do.

The song is changing and the priest is talking again when my phone vibrates in my clutch. It buzzes hard because I still have it turned all the way up from my shifts. There’s light coming in through the stained glass becaus e the fog that was laying in from Lake Michigan earlier this morning is lifting, and the heat of the day is out to play for real now. 

I wait after the priest dismis ses us. I wait whil e people clasp hands and laugh and I watch while the dark stranger gives the priest a half hug and a very white-toothed smile. I pretend not to notice when he looks deliberately back to where I stand and smiles again.  I wait.  I need to ask the Father for a minute , for a word to get some of this madness out of my head. 

Figuring out what to say is a good distraction because it’s always awkward asking for a spur of the moment confession. He’s probably ready for a quick break before the next mass. I just need a few minutes. I think I can be clear and somewhat succinct if I just focus on Edward and Jessica and don’t get into my general inability to function like a normal adult with a job in my field. 

My phone vibrates again and the sound reminds me that I never looked at it the first time. Inside my clutch, I see the words “Go out and run today,” lit up from Alice, but it’s the number and the photo above them that stop me cold. The lady and her kids go around me because heaven and earth both have to wait a second. 

I’m shaking so bad I don’t know how I get the stupid privacy code typed and the message pulled up properly but it’s Edward’s number there. There’s a blast of color up one side of the picture, a literal rainbow of fabric as slick and smooth and new as one of Alice’s favorite dresses. The rest is water and sky, deep blue gray scattered with a million points of sunshine, reaching into a forever horizon of lazy white and gray and blue air.

No caption. No words. 

The crowd moves me up in front of the priest, who waits while I stow the phone back in my purse. “Happy Sunday,” he says. “May your week be blessed, my dear.”

I have no words either. I can only smile back, as mute as the statues around us, shaking his hand in wonder, and nodding.

Outside, I pause on the bottom step and snap a photo of the church’s front, trying to capture a little of the simple glory of the concrete front and crumbling statues with the sun above and around like a holy shield. Come all who are thirsty, is what I think, because in this moment I am refreshed and I am alive. 

I hit send. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hey. So as promised, this is complete. I waited to start reposting it until it was actually finished this time. I am editing chapters as I go, but it will update every Thursday from here on out, barring illness, floods or earthquakes.  
> I hope if you liked it the first time around, you'll give it another go, and rest safely in the knowledge that I have finished it (so no worries that you will never know how it ends).  
> I moved to posting here on AO3 because I'm writing a lot of Star Wars fic now (REYLO LIVES) and this is where that audience lives. Please check out some of my newer work and some of the Twi work I've finished and am reposting!  
> A couple of things: This story is a HEA but it's based on cheating. It just is. If you don't like that kind of story, bail out now. You will love and many times, greatly hate, both Bella and Edward before it's over. That's ok. They're human and flawed, like all my characters. Just know that they will fuck up and do stupid shit, so if that's not your cuppa, bail out now.  
> I also got a ton of grief on FF from anons. There are no anons here. Please talk to me. But sign in!  
> Anyway, I missed you all.


End file.
